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Thoya

Thoya conlang: Questions

Boolean questions are easy: ka means "whether"; so a sentence that starts with ka is asking if it's the case.

Free-form questions, using "what", are the most important. The word is ken, and it always takes the place of what it takes the place of:

"What did you find?" = "se roj alo ken" Literally: "You found what?"

Compare English syntax, in which the question goes at the front regardless of how the sentence is formatted: "ken se roj alo".

Words like when, where, and why, are very straightfoward because they reduce to shortcuts for what. "Where" is "at what", for example. And since they're prepositional phrases in disguise, they can just go at the beginning.

kɪs - when

kɪq - where

ker - why (cause)

kov - why (motive)

koc - why (evidence - "why do you think that")

kez - how (means)

kɪt - how (degree)

kas - for how long

kaj - how (manner)

To turn any of these into the relative version ("I left *when* I heard the bell"), insert a y after the k.