tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jun 19 10:22:40 1996

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Re: Question

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>Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1996 02:50:42 -0700
>From: KATIE MONCELSI <[email protected]>

>Could someone tell me how you use tense of verb in Klingon.  Also, I 
>noticed that someone posted something asking the age and what people 
>do for the people on the list.  I am 15 and don't have a job.  Don't 
>stop posting things you'd usually post because of my age.

Generally, Klingon verbs do not show tense.  There are examples in CK:
wa'Hu' jI'oj; DaHjaj jIghung, wa'leS jIDoy'... the verb doesn't change; the
tense is shown only by context.

Klingon verbs do not reflect tense, but they do reflect *aspect*.  This is
a distinction that may be hard for an English-speaker to catch onto right
away, but it's not all that complicated.  Think of it this way: tense tells
you where in time the action is located relative to "now" (whenever the
speaker is talking).  It establishes a reference point for the action.
Now, at the time of that reference point, the action in question may
already have happened, or it may still be happening (or it may be about to
happen, but Klingon doesn't deal with that case).  Or we may not be making
a point about the state of the action at the time.  We do this in English:

I ate		reference is sometime in the past, no statement about aspect.
I was eating	sometime in the past, action is ongoing.
I had eaten	sometime in the past, action was completed by then.
I am eating	present, action is ongoing.
I have eaten	still talking in the present, but the action is completed.
I will have eaten      	future, with the action completed at ref time.

And so on.  The type 7 verb suffixes express these states of completion:

ghaH vIqIHpu'	I have/had/will have met him/her.  At whatever time I'm
	talking about, the initial meeting has already occurred.

jIQontaH	I am/was/will be sleeping.  At whatever the reference time
	is, I'll be involved with sleeping then; the sleep act is/was/will
	be ongoing.

The suffixes -ta' and -lI' are similar, except that they add different
shades of meaning.  -ta' implies that there was intent to the act that is
completed, and -lI' implies that there is progression in the ongoing act to
some natural stopping point.

For a better, explanation, see my article in HolQeD issue 2:4.

~mark

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