what you can ask

[David Gil]

Some responses to Frans' questions about verbal questions:

> 1.  Where else do we find such interrogative pro verbs?

Such forms occur wiht great frequency in Tagalog, and the handful of
colloquial varieties of Malay / Indonesian that I happen to be familiar
with.  They're probably widespread throughout Austronesian.

> 2.  In what sense are they verbs?

Well in Tagalog and Malay / Indonesian they probably aren't verbs, since
in these languages the noun-verb distinction is problematical at best.

I would be interested to know if there are interrogative pro verbs in
languages with a robust noun-verb distinction.

> 3.  When used as verbs, can they be used intransitively, transitively,
> bitransitively?  (The dog WHATed? -- It barked;  The dog WHATed the boy? --
> It bit him;  Smith WHATed the Salvation Army his BMW? -- donated ...) Or
> are there ever distinct intrans/trans/bitrans interrogative pro verbs?

In Tagalog, _ano_ "what" takes the full range of voicing morphology, and
so would assume different forms in each of the above examples.  In Riau
Indonesian, voicing morphology is more limited, and is also optional,
so, in addition to more complex forms, bare _apa_ "what" could be used
in all of the above examples.

> 4.  Are there any other categorial distinctions for interrogative pro
> verbs, enabling you, for instance, to ask specifically about being, doing,
> having, perceiving, saying, etc.?

In the languages that I'm familiar with, not usually.  The best I can
think of is Riau Indonesian _kenapa_, a reduced form of _kena apa_
"undergo what" which *tends* to have an adversative interpretation, eg.
_Ali kenapa_ "Ali (adversely) underwent what", or, more colloquially,
"What happened to Ali".

Best,

David

--
David Gil

Department of Linguistics
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Inselstrasse 22, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany

Telephone: 49-341-9952321
Fax: 49-341-9952119
Email: gil at eva.mpg.de
Webpage:  http://monolith.eva.mpg.de/~gil/

[currently in Jakarta]