tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Apr 20 19:01:10 1998
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Re: KLBC:Re: My first try at tlhIngan Hol KLBC
- From: Qov <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: KLBC:Re: My first try at tlhIngan Hol KLBC
- Date: Mon, 20 Apr 1998 18:58:23 -0700
This has been in my mailbox a few days. Time to get on it.
At 00:43 98-04-15 -0700, Englebert wrote:
}Engelbert wrote:
}
}Hi Qov,
}
}Thanks for overlooking my homework.
English is so illogical. "Overlook" means "fail to see." "Look over" means
"examine" or "have a look at." This is an example of the kind of pitfalls
that Klingon probably has for us, too.
}It became clear to me that the
}linguistic notions "tense" and "aspect" are two completely different
}things ...
Right on! That's the truth. Klingon has no tense. Aspect is not a
substitute for tense, it is another thing.
}... and that I was mixing them up. Yet, I don't seem to understand
}the use of {-pu'} completely.
}> Qov wrote:
}
}> >*Maassluis* jIDabpu'.
} >{M. vIDab} "I lived in M." The place inhabited is the object of
}{Dab}. No
} > perfective.
}
}> > }No perfective because from the context (I moved to Amsterdam) it is
}> > }clear that I don't live in M. anymore?
}
}> No perfective because the tense you want is simple past.
}> You have something stuck in your head that tells you to use the perfective
}> for anything completed in the past.
}
}You're right, and that "something" is my native tongue. I cannot say "Ik
}woonde in Maassluis" (simple past, or imperfective: I lived in M., and I
}possibly still do) if I mean "Ik heb in Maassluis gewoond" (perfective:
}I lived in M., but not anymore). It's not grammatically incorrect, but
}it doesn't sound natural. You can do this in English, though.
Interesting. I'm always interested in the way things like this give us an
idea of assumptions we've made about Klingon without noticing. You *could*
say {M. vIDabpu'}, to express the fact that you lived there once and haven't
any more, and as I've lost the original context, I don't know if that didn't
fit. Quite possibly I was ripping out all the unnecessary perfective to
make a point, attacking the ones that worked but weren't vital along with
the incorrect ones. If you said {wej ben M. vIDabpu'} that would mean that
three years ago you had already stopped living there.
{wej ben D. vIDabchoH. M. vIDabpu' 'ach pa' mumuSmo' roghvaH jImej.}
"Three years ago I took up residence in D. I had lived in M. but I left
because the population there hated me."
The time of the sentence is set by the moving to D., so that is uninflected.
The action of living in M. is complete at that time, so perfective is used.
The action of the population hating *could* have been given the perfective,
but the point is the completion of the living there, not of the hating.
{mumuSpu'mo'} "they had hated me" would imply that they have stopped hating you.
{wej ben D. vIDabtaH. pa' mumuSmo' roghvaH jImej 'ej M. vIDabchoH.}
"Three years ago I was living in D. I left because the population there
hated me, and I moved to M."
Here the time of the sentence is the time that you lived in D. No other
action in the sentence was already complete at that time, so no perfective
is used. I used a continuous aspect on {Dab} because residing is an ongoing
process. You could have put a continuous aspect on {muS}, too, to emphasize
that they just kept hating you, nonstop.
{wej ben D. vIDabtaH. mumuSpu' roghvaH 'ach puq vItoDDI' mulajchoH.}
"Three years ago I lived in D. The population had hated me, but when I
saved a child they came to accept me."
Again the time of the sentence is three years ago, at which time you were
residing in D. You could still be living there. At some point before this
time the population had hated you, thus the perfective, but when you saved a
child they came to accept you.
Imagine a number of screens, one behind the other, on which the events that
occur are displayed. Pick one as the reference time of the sentence, the
time that you are talking about. Everything on that screen or forward is
imperfective. Everything on a screen behind that, that is complete, is
perfective.
{wej ben D.Daq juH vIchenmoHlI'. pa' mumuSlaw'mo' roghvaH vIchenmoH 'e'
vImev 'ej M. vIDabchoH.}
"Three years ago I was building a home in D. Because the population there
seemed to hate me, I stopped building and moved to M."
Continuous aspect, the building was ongoing at the time of the sentence.
Unlike the subway system in Rome, the house was being built with sight of
finishing it, tus I used {lI-}. None of the actions happened before the
time stamp on the sentence, so no perfective.
}Another "something" that tells me this might be TKD, which states:
} "(about the suffix {-pu'})
} This suffix indicates that an action is completed."
}Nothing less, nothing more.
Yeah. And some of the examples are even more confusing, really appearing to
make {-pu'} a simple past. I feel weaselish when I explain this, because
it's one of the few things that simply learning TKD inside out won't help.
I seem to be contradicting what TKD says as I say it. Here goes:
1. While Marc Okrand was working on the language, {-pu'} was going to be
past tense. This changed, but not all the examples changed. Many things
changed. For example {qama'} was going to be "I told you" but ended up as
prisoner when {ja'} became say. {yaS} was originally "prisoner," which Marc
Okrand explained is why there is so much hitting of officers in the
examples. He changed the translations instead of changing the Klingon when
the words changed. It looks like the original meaning of {-pu'} persists in
a lot of examples.
2. Marc Okrand has explained both more clearly and more obscurely (in
linguistic terms that are sometimes over my head) that {-pu'} is supposed to
work the way I'm obsessing over it. In fact, the first time I had to
explain this as BG I confided to Mark Shoulson that my idea of the
perfective, well understood, consistent with other grammarians, and complete
in itself, nevertheless didn't seem to be properly founded in TKD. Mark is
always wishy washy when he's not sure, sometimes annoyingly so, but he
pointed out examples, like the explaination of tense in Klingon on one of
the audio tapes, and private conversations that secured the position. Yes,
"private conversations" is an awfully scary place to stand, and I'd like
more information, too. Maybe one day Maltz will write an essay on the
perfective.
}> If the point of the verb is on the
}> completion, be it past, present or future completion, use the perfective.
}> If the point is the action of the verb, be that action in the past present
}> or future, don't use the perfective.
}
}There's a third point, and that's the point I seem to be missing. Is
}there something I overlooked in TKD or maybe KGT?
Nah, not really. You don't have the full spectrum of tense that English
gives you to draw a sense of time. You have timestamps and then you have
one shade of background. Imagine that you have to paint a picture of the
events with the ones further back being int he past and the ones further
forward being in th future. You pick some point int he depth of the view to
be the time of the sentence, and you timestamp it with {wej ben} or {yaS
vISuchtaHvIS}. Everything in the background to that gets painted grey,
given the perfective. Everything that stretches forward to the present
shows through. You can change your point of view when needed, like:
wej ben De'wI'mey vIyajbe'chu'taH 'ach DaH De'wI'wIj vIchenmoHta'.
"Three years ago I didn't understand computers at all, but now I have built
my own."
A new timestamp means that the action that is perfective in the second half
of the sentence happens after the timestamp of the first part.
}I hope you can help me out. Some examples maybe?
I hope this helps. I also hope that you will point out anything that I seem
to have assumed ought to be perfective/imperfective without stating my
assumptions.
I know that there are more things like that "I have lived in X" lurking out
there.
Qov [email protected]
Beginners' Grammarian