[Tlhingan-hol] KLBC: "Which" and uses of question words

[Bellerophon, modeler]

And what does a question word do to a command? Because of the prefix, I
immediately read <qatlh HIja'> as "tell me why," not as "why do you tell
me?" But what he wants you to tell him the reason. The wording <qatlh
HIja'> might be nonsense in Klingon.
~'eD

On Sun, Dec 6, 2015 at 1:44 AM, John R. Harness <cartweel at gmail.com> wrote:

> Aloha, everybody. I myself am using the KLBC tag because I have a question
> that may be interesting to beginners -- but apologies if it is a little
> convoluted!
>
> It came up as I was responding to qunnoQ's question about {-'e'} and I
> wanted to start a new thread to keep the issues separate. The issue is
> question words.
>
> The Klingon Dictionary tells us about the placement of question words in
> section 6.4: For {'Iv} and {nuq}, "the question word fits into the sentence
> in the position that would be occupied by the answer." chay', ghorgh,
> nuqDaq, and qatlh go at the beginning of the statement, and 'ar follows the
> noun to which it refers.
>
> qunnoQ asked: {lugh mu'tlhegh nuq ? nuq 'ej qatlh HIja'}
>
> I (think) I understood the intended meaning, but a few things seem amiss
> and I'm not sure how to solve the issue.
>
> I suppose my question is: Can nuq stand in as it does here in {lugh
> mu'tlhegh nuq}? It implies to me something like "Which sentence is right?"
> but I don't think nuq really operates that way, because I don't think it is
> the right placement. Instead, should it be something like this?:
> {lughbogh mu'tlhegh 'oH nuq'e'?} "What is the sentence which is correct?"
>
> There may be some potential confusion between the two English words that
> sound alike: "which" (the question word, which doesn't seem to have a
> direct Klingon analog) and "which" a word that marks relative clauses (in
> Klingon marked with {-bogh}. Am I correctly disentangling these?
>
> Additionally, can nuq and qatlh stand on their own as they do in {nuq 'ej
> qatlh HIja'}? My guess is that they can, but I am unsure.
>
> 'arHa
> Beginner's Grammarian
>
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