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Date: Sat, 21 Jan 1995 13:34:20 +0100 (MET)
From: Goran Topic <topic@MATH.HR>
Subject: Indirect questions and other langs
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To: Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
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I promised to bring you some info on Old Irish use of indirect questions
and I've only now gotten to it. Old Irish was peculiar as an example
because it has no relative pronouns. Anyway, things stand like this:

You can't say "I see what happened", only "I see that which happened
[there]", {Ad.ciu a tarlu and}=<I-see it what-happened then-there>

BUT, "I see when he came" is perfectly OK: {Ad.ci'u in tan do.dechnid}
=<I-see when he-came>

Not much help there, I suppose. But I did find a cute fact about Latin
(which supports a guess I made): In pre-classical Latin there was a
clear distinction between "I know who came" and "I don't know who came".
In the former, {venire} was in indicative, while in the latter it took
a conjunctive form, that bore the mark of uncertainty to it. The guess
I referred to was to use {mi djuno ledu'u dakau klama} and
{mi na djuno ledu'u makau klama}.

I've rambled enough of comparative linguistics in the last two posts, so
I'll just shut up now. :) Private mail me if this sort of not-strictly-
in-topic posts bothers you.

co'o mi'e. goran.

--
Learn languages! The more langs you know, the more incomprehensible you can get
e'udoCILreleiBANgu.izo'ozo'onairoBANguteDJUnobedocubanRI'a.ailekadonaka'eSELjmi