[Tlhingan-hol] "Who are you?"

[Rohan Fenwick]

ghItlhpu' Alex, jatlh:
> Conversational Klingon, that venerable old resource (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEjBhGD2rFA),
> lists {SoH 'Iv} as "Who are you?" (from 11:20 on the above page) ... but TKD
 says the following:-
>"For 'Iv who? and nuq what? the question word fits into the sentence in the position that would be
> occupied by the answer." [TKD, 6.4]
>So technically, the construction ought to be {'Iv SoH} / {'Iv ghaH} / {'Iv tlhIH} / {'Iv chaH}, and {nuq 'oH}
> / {nuq bIH} for "What is it? / What are they?," right?

By the strictest interpretation of the rules in TKD, yes. However, it was later revealed that both {nuq} and {'Iv} can also behave as pronouns for the purposes of the pronoun-as-verb. CK has a couple of additional examples with {nuq} (e.g. {Dochvam nuq}, {Daqvam nuq}), and a few years afterwards, Marc Okrand wrote the following as part of a post to the MSN newsgroup in response to a question about how to translate "What is your favourite month?":

"(2) You suggested translating "What is your favorite month?" as: jarlIj qaq nuq? This one's a little easier to deal with. Your sentence literally means "What is your preferable month?" The basic syntax is correct. Question words (in this case, nuq "what?") function the same way pronouns do in questions with "to be" in the English translations. Thus, the question yIH nuq? "What is a tribble?" is exactly parallel the statement yIH 'oH "It is a tribble" (where yIH is "tribble" and 'oH is "it"). The answer to the question yIH nuq? ("What is a tribble?") would presumably be a definition or description of a tribble." (posting by Okrand to MSN newsgroup, 12 Dec 1996)

Consequently, {SoH 'Iv} can be analysed as having {'Iv} acting as the pronoun-as-verb, and {SoH} the pronoun as... er... pronoun.

QeS
 		 	   		  
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