tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Jan 14 04:59:03 1995
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perception of time
- From: [email protected]
- Subject: perception of time
- Date: Sat, 14 Jan 1995 07:58:48 -0500
I've noticed something quite remarkable about some of the time element words,
specifically those that indicate points of time in non-present times, such as
{ben}.
TKD translates such words as "years ago," "days from now," etc. And we have
canonical evidence that a sentence like {cha'ben qaS QuD} means, "Two years
ago the insurrection occured," or in other words, {ben} in that context
means, "a point in time in the past separated from the present by a span of
two years." But from our understanding of numbers, it would seem that {cha'
ben} would mean "two years ago," in the sense of, "two different years which
happened in the past, and not necessarily two years consecutive with the
present year." In fact, if you wanted to express, "During these past two
years," it might require something like {qaStaHvIS cha'benvam}.
Of course, the word in TKD is {cha'ben} and not {cha' ben}, which may tell us
a different meaning is lurking, tho we can't be sure what that meaning is.
(And so we can't generalize it to other types of nouns, Mr Proechel).
Also, we have canon (PK) telling us what a construction like {cha'ben puq}
means, i.e., "two-year-old child," or, "child of a point in time two years
ago."
For the most part, it's interesting to speculate on, and that's about it. But
perhaps some people who have felt uncomfortable when seeing such
monstrocities as {qaStaHvIS cha' benvam} and so forth need no longer sweat
it, since it means something different from {cha'ben}.
Guido