37.1. kʷaʔ clauses: Indirect commands and questions
| ʔáx̣əŋ cn kʷaʔ hiyáʔəs. | ‘I said (to him) to go.’ |
| x̣ənʔáxʷ cn kʷaʔ hiyáʔəs. | ‘I said to him to go.’ |
| sát cn kʷaʔ hiyáʔəs. | ‘I told him to go.’ |
| yəcúst cn kʷaʔ hiyáʔəs. | ‘I told him to go.’ |
| čtát cn kʷaʔ hiyáʔəs. | ‘I asked him to go.’ |
| čtát cn kʷaʔ hiyáʔəs u. | ‘I asked him if he went.’ |
► 1 You probably remember kʷaʔ clauses from §17.3, where kʷaʔ is used in a construction expressing ‘or;’ §19.4, where a kʷaʔ clause is part of a construction expressing ‘never;’ and §30.1, where kʷaʔ is shown to introduce conditional (‘if, when’) clauses. It would be good to go back now and review how those work.
► 2 Notice that kʷaʔ in most of these sentences cannot be translated as ‘if’ or ‘when.’ The little word kʷaʔ is what linguists call a complementizer. It functions to introduce what is called a complement clause or subordinate clause. The clause it introduces can be an alternative clause, as in §17.3, an ‘if’ or ‘when’ condition, as in §30.1, or it can be an indirect quote, as in these models.
► 3 Just as with the conditional clause the subject of the indirect quote is marked by one of the subordinate subject pronoun suffixes. See §13 to review the subordinate subject pronouns.
► 4 The first two models could also be translated as ‘I told him to go.’ With the reporting verbs ʔáx̣əŋ, x̣ənʔáxʷ, sát, and yəcúst, the kʷaʔ clause indirect quote is interpreted as an indirect command. In §37.2 you will see that this is different with the other type of indirect quote.
► 5 Look at the last two models. Both of these have čtát as the reporting verb. The first of these two, čtát cn kʷaʔ hiyáʔəs, is interpreted as an indirect command just as each of the preceding models. The last model is different. It is not interpreted as an indirect command but as an indirect question.
► 6 Notice that what makes the last of the models an indirect question rather than an indirect command is the presence of the u yes/no question marker in the subordinate clause. This is the only difference between the Klallam versions of the last two models.
► 7 Generally, when the reporting verb is čtát, if the subordinate clause contains the yes/no u or any other question word such as cán ‘who,’ stáŋ ‘what,’ or ʔaʔstúʔŋət ‘do what,’ then it is interpreted as an indirect question rather than an indirect command.
► 8 For the indirect commands, as shown in the first five models, the patient of the reporting verb must be the same as the subject of the subordinate verb. For example, the patient, which is the object of sát in the third model, is ‘him’ and refers to the same person as the subject of hiyáʔ.
► 9 Look at these patterns to help make that last point clear:
sác cn kʷaʔ hiyáʔəxʷ. ‘I told you to go.’
satúŋɬ cxʷ kʷaʔ hiyáʔəɬ. ‘You told us to go.’
In the first sentence, the patient is the object of sát, ‑c ‘you,’ and the subject of hiyáʔ is ‑əxʷ ‘you.’ In the second sentence, the object of sát is ‑úŋɬ ‘us,’ and the subject of hiyáʔ is ‑əɬ ‘we.’ In both cases, the patient of the reporting verb refers to the same thing as the subject of the subordinate verb.
► 10 Notice that we say that it is the reporting clause patient, not necessarily the object, that must match the kʷaʔ clause subject. First of all, notice that ʔáx̣əŋ in the first model is intransitive, so it has no object. It does have an implied patient.
► 11 The following sentence also shows that it is the reporting clause patient that must match the kʷaʔ clause subject:
sátəŋ cn kʷaʔ hiyáʔən. ‘I was told to go.’
Since the reporting verb here is passive, its subject is the patient. The subject of the verb in the kʷaʔ clause here is the same as the patient subject of the reporting verb.
► 12 This matching of the reporting verb patient with the subordinate subject is a grammatical requirement of kʷaʔ clause indirect quotes in Klallam. So sentences like *sác cn kʷaʔ hiyáʔəs are just no good in Klallam. You might guess that this sentence would mean ‘I told you he goes.’ It doesn’t. It just makes no sense at all. To get sentences like ‘I told you he goes,’ you must use the ʔaʔ či clause, which is covered in the next section, §37.2.
► 13 Note that this matching of the reporting verb patient with the kʷaʔ clause subject is required for all of the other reporting verbs as well as for sát.
► 14 One final point: Compare these models with the models in §36. Notice that there are two reporting verbs that are in §36 but not here. These two are qʷáy and x̣ə́nəŋ. When used as reporting verbs, these two cannot be used with indirect quotes—only with direct quotes, as in §36.
 | sáʔətəŋ cn kʷaʔ t̓úk̓ʷn. | ‘I was told to go home.’ |
 | ʔaʔstúŋət kʷaʔčə. | ‘Why?’ |
| mán̓ cn ʔuʔ x̣ə́ɬ. | ‘I’m very sick.’ |
| t̓k̓ʷísc caʔn. | ‘I’ll take you home.’ |