tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Oct 31 11:48:01 1996
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: KLBC - just "jatlh" - why?
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 08:12:13 -0800
>From: [email protected] (alan weiner)
>
>yup - I see. I should've looked in TKD instead of just the Pictorial
>Guide to the Verbal Suffixes. (*mine* now shows a difference between
>-pu' and -ta') And I learned...
>
>So I'll change my question to:
>
> Why <jatlh> instead of <jatlhta'> ?
OK, I'll try this one.
To me, any of {jatlh}, {jatlhpu'}, and {jatlhta'} would be correct and
understandable, with some differences of meaning (which in this case are
not very significant.)
You can use {jatlh} (or {ghItlh}), and think of it as "wrote." Come to
think of it, even in English we will say "Mr. Zimmer writes..." when the
writing really already happened. This is perfectly legitimate. The
Klingon {jatlh} is unmarked as to time, and the context is pretty clear
that the time is past (if he hasn't said it yet, how am I responding? If
he's still writing it, how can I quote him?) So {jatlh}/{ghItlh} is quote
acceptable for this situation.
{jatlhpu'}/{jatlhta'} are equivalent in terms of temporal concepts, they
only differ in an additional nugget of connotation. {jatlhpu'} you can
translate as "has said." Now, there *is* a difference between "said" and
"has said" in general, but in the situation under consideration, either one
makes sense. One talks about an action happening in the past as a simple
event, and another talks about the present and the fact that the event is
complete. Either one works, and either one makes sense. You might choose
to use -ta' instead of -pu' if you want to emphasize that the writing was
done deliberately (and of course it was; it's hard to write whole sentences
by accident), but I don't think -pu' is wrong if you don't need that
connotation added.
That help?
~mark
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.2
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.4, an Emacs/PGP interface
iQB1AwUBMnkCU8ppGeTJXWZ9AQEN0AMApBroTwCmgE/MrEzP66LGKez/wE4CPp7f
z0hWHjIH1G0TFvmdjpqxzoWAVBWrcD43m6A34jwzp1p7DMEl8SUBifFxrerGSaSD
HjAnfrTx/9bOQJ3DIraNCiiyq6Lz6OS/
=MhZ7
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----