Embedded questions

This is a much overdue followup to the seminal piece on embedded questions and theta clauses from a couple years ago. These expansions and adjustments quickly developed in the weeks after.

As a reminder, the standard way to say things like "I don't know what you want" or "I wonder where my clock came from" is apparently via nominalization of the sub-clause, thus

ni-na-ilo ka-se-halu
1SG-NEG-know DEF-2SG-want
"I don't know what you want," lit. "I don't know the thing you want"

toko keo ka-sáti-ni (ko-tule)
wonder origin DEF-clock-1SG (NOM-come)
"I wonder where my clock came from," "I wonder about the origin of my clock('s coming)"

Figuring out these structures was a huge relief from my previous anxiety that I might be thoughtlessly calquing IE strategies, but once I had them in hand I realized right away that that fear wasn't really cross-linguistically motivated. A more familiar variety of finite embedded clauses is well represented in languages from many other families, and as such I really don't see a reason to ban them from Koa:

ni-na-ilo [ kea sa se-halu ]
1SG-NEG-know what FOC 2SG-want
"I don't know what you want," "I don't know what it is you want"

toko [ o-kea sa ka-sáti-ni i tule ]
wonder ABL-what FOC DEF-clock-1SG FIN come
"I wonder where my clock comes from," "I wonder where it is that my clock comes from"

As glossed above, these kinds of forms might see slightly different usage pragmatically, feeling a little wordier, possibly softer, possibly less formal.

Entirely new to this discussion are embedded yes/no questions. Here too a finite structure is possible, using ai "whether, or":

ni-na-ilo ai ta-cu-tasi
1SG-NEG-know whether 3SG-IRR-repeat
"I don't know whether it will happen again"

...and again this option exists against another possibility with a nominalized clause headed by one of the infamous ke-compounds: kema "current, ongoing," kesi "past," kecu "future, what would/will be," kete "possibility," kelu "desire," keki "necessity." Thus

ni-na-ilo kecu ko-ta-tasi
1SG-NEG-know future NOM-3SG-repeat
"I don't know whether it will happen again," lit. "I don't know the future of its happening again"

Similarly, with the other types:

kema kotatasi "whether it is/was happening again"
kesi kotatasi "whether it had happened again"
kete kotatasi "whether it could happen again"
kelu kotatasi "whether there was a desire for it to happen again"
keki kotatasi "whether it has to happen again

Any of these could be rephrased with ai and the particle in question within the clause rather than outside it: kete kotatasi = ai tatetasi "whether it could happen again, whether there's a possibility of it happening again." Here I have the sense -- which as usual will have to be confirmed in time by usage -- that the ai-type clauses may be more comfortable and vernacular, the ke-clauses more literary.

Obiter: in the original theta clause post, I was omitting the nominalizer ko in the embedded clauses with ke-compounds (i.e. just kete tatasi rather than kete kotatasi). I'm unclear on why I did this, and at this point I think it was either just a mistake...or I was getting a little ahead of myself with an experimental idea that ko might be optional in clauses lacking a nominal subject. In this event, we could also have e.g. niilo selóhani "I know you love me" alongside niilo koselóhani "I know that you love me." I'm not sure yet what the implications of this would be for parseability, so an official verdict is pending more rigorous exploration.

Bride of the nominalized clause

What should happen to a Koa clause with a nominal subject when the clause is nominalized? This has become a bit of an albatross. The last eleven years have seen numerous well-thought-out, well-intentioned, sincere attempts to answer this question; moments of satisfied relief have followed, but a seed of anxiety has always remained that we haven't got it quite right. As, apparently, now.

My last bid for a final answer, in which the nominalizer ko actually replaces the finiteness marker i, is odd to my Indo-European sensibilities but quite elegant. The problem -- if indeed it is a problem -- is that the literal translation of such clauses according to the usual Koa syntactic rules ends up looking anomalous at best and like word salad at worst. For example, a phrase from the previous post:

na-vi-ana po-mítitinu ko-cita
NEG-IMP-give GEN-bedbug NOM-bite
"don't let the bedbugs bite"

Here the nominalized clause is pomítitinu kocita "for bedbugs to bite," "bedbugs' biting." If I parse that phrase according to ordinary principles, though, it seems to mean something like "bedbugs of biting," parallel to e.g. poétete kocini "acts of kindness." So..."don't allow bedbugs of biting!"

Maybe that's fine, because outside of Loglan and friends the mechanism of language itself was never "supposed" to be logical: merely parseable. Which I think this entirely is, and as I mentioned in the post in which I introduced this, it's not so dissimilar from what Latin does.

I guess the point where I started to fret again was when I realized that another structure -- which I have also proposed for this purpose in the past, though perhaps for not entirely the right reasons -- might address this in an even more parseable form. The core concept here is that any verb phrase can follow a head noun as a modifier, just like any other adjective: thus

mítitinu veta
bedbug giant
"giant bedbugs"

mítitinu ma-cita
bedbug CONT-bite
"biting bedbugs, bedbugs that are biting"

This being so, it would appear that we could create a nominalized clause simply by -- on the surface -- deleteing the finite i entirely, and marking the whole thing with ko at the beginning:

po-mítitinu i cita
GEN-bedbugs FIN bite
"bedbugs bite"

po-mítitinu cita
GEN-bedbugs bite
"biting bedbugs"

ko po-mítitinu cita
NOM GEN-bedbug bite
"bedbugs' biting," "that bedbugs bite," "for bedbugs to bite"

This would give us an alternate, less poetic, more easily parseable injunction,

na-vi-ana ko po-mítitinu cita
NEG-IMP-give NOM GEN-bedbug bite
"don't let the bedbugs bite"

...which happens to be identical to the most recent proposed syntax other than the position of ko! Thus again

na-vi-ana po-mítitinu ko-cita
NEG-IMP-give GEN-bedbug NOM-bite
"don't let the bedbugs bite," "don't allow the bedbugs biting"

Maybe there's no decision to be made and the two structures could coexist, just like in ditransitive VP's like

ana ka-nosu pe-vii
give DEF-elephant OBL-mango
"give the elephant a mango"

ana po-vii la-ka-nosu
give GEN-mango DAT-DEF-elephant
"give a mango to the elephant"

I'm honestly not sure. I don't see a strong reason to disallow either structure, but the muse is also not sending me a resounding chime of rightness in either case. One thing is certain, which is that I am very, very tired of going around in circles about this year after year, and on that basis I'm inclined to leave both options in circulation and allow usage rather than theory to cast light on the question. I would be relieved for this whole area to stop feeling like a crisis after 11 years of ceaseless gear-grinding.

Of course, this discussion has completely omitted to mention the fact that another structure also exists for this same meaning, a finite one with ve:

na-vi-ana ve po-mítitinu i cita
NEG-IMP-give as/like GEN-bedbug FIN bite"
"don't let the bedbugs bite"

I'd previously confidently affirmed that these ve-structures are identical in meaning to the the nominalized ones with ko, but Nahuatl has been making some gentle suggestions recently that this might not quite be so. That's potentially a really big revelation that's still taking shape; hopefully more on this soon, once I'm confident I understand it myself.