tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jan 02 09:13:21 1998
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Re: Translation of English Past and Present Perfect Tenses in Klingon
- From: Qov <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Translation of English Past and Present Perfect Tenses in Klingon
- Date: Fri, 02 Jan 1998 09:12:54 -0800
At 07:45 98-01-01 -0800, mIHayl wrote:
}Let me respond to the various remarks:
}
}First of all to charghwI' (William Martin)
}
}>At one of the qep'a' sessions in Philadelphia, Okrand explained
}>about perfective vs. past tense, and then as the focus was
}>moving on to something else, he muttered to one side, "Of course
}>at one time, {-pu'} WAS past tense..." It was clear that when he
}>was first developing the language, it was past tense and at some
}>point, he decided to make it perfective instead.
}
}> We don't know if it was one of those adjustments because of a
}> change in a subtitle, or some other backfit, or if he later
}> decided it would be more interesting that way. It doesn't
}> matter. It means perfective, not past tense, even if some
}> examples seem otherwise.
}
}I agree completely that -pu' means perfective in the sense of completed, not
}past tense. The real questions is how to translate to and from a language
}that uses aspect rather than tense into a language that uses tenses.
Not 'uses aspect rather than tenses.' That implies that one is a substitute
for another. That's like saying 'uses gender rather than case.' Gender and
case are both features a language's nouns may have. Both tell you something
about how words in the sentence relate to one another, but they are in no
way substitutes for one another. You wouldn't start trying to use the
feminine gender to indicate the instrumental in some language that lacked
cases. It makes as much sense to declare that the perfective represents
past in a language that lacks tense.
}Let's start again with the statement from TKD that the "perfective" marker
}-pu' "indicates that an action is completed. It is instructive to look at
}languages such as Biblical Hebrew and Classical Arabic that use aspect
rather }than tense in their verbal system. In both of these languages, the
perfect, }which is used for completed action, is nearly always translated as
an English }past tense.
Proves nothing. Russian present perfective gets translated with English
future.
}When I say past tense, I don't mean only the simple past, but any of the
}past tenses which include simple past (I saw), present perfect (I have
seen), }and past perfect (I had seen).
Sometimes it does makes sense to translate Klingon perfective without
English perfective.
vItlhuchlu'pu' - I was exhausted/I am exhausted/I will be exhausted.
I'd do the above just because "I have been exhausted" and "something has
xausted me" sound awkward and expresses the same idea.
The Klingon perfective can be translated in the English past present or future.
}Thus with Klingon, as defined by Marc Okrand, the perfective aspect marker
}-pu', as is shown by the overwhelming majority of his examples (50 to 1) is
}rendered by either a simple past or present perfect in English.
Definitely not that high. You would get those numbers only if all your
examples are from the first edition TKD.
}The single exception, wa'Hu' jIghung, I deal with below.
ghorgh tujchoHpu' bIQ (TKD p. 171) (translated as future)
bIHeghvIpchugh bIHeghpu' (TKW p. 72) (translated in present perfective)
}> They may be leftovers from when it WAS used for past tense. It
}> doesn't matter. The directions have consistently told us that it
}> is perfective. In conversations with him, he has maintained this
}> as well. There are errors in canon. We have to sift out that
}> which is an error vs. that which teaches us.
}
}If there are errors (or better inconsistancies) in canon, then looking at
}the
}examples and what they imply is the best way of resolving questions. That
}is in fact how all language grammars are compiled. Rules are derived from
}looking at the language.
The examples in the beginning of TKD are translated as if -pu' were a past
tense marker. Think of it in terms of the lexographer not having a good
grasp on the language yet. Something Marc Okrand says at a later date
overrides what he said at an earlier date.
Marc Okrand made up this language, but he also learned it from scratch, same
as we did. And some of the things he made up he had to change midstream.
When writing TKD I imagine he had to go back several times to change things.
I remember him saying that originally {yaS} had a differnt meaning,
"prisoner" I think, which might explain why there is so much hitting of
officers in the examples. When that meaning changed he would have had to go
back through the manuscript and change "prisoner" to "officer." It looks
like when {-pu'} changed from past to perfective he forgot to change all the
examples. It's really hard to make that sort of global change when you
still have to look up all the words. What, shock! horror! Okrand doesn't
know all the words? Hell no. He doesn't know them now. He sure didn't
know them all in 1985.
}> In this case, you can interpret that {-pu'} either means
}> perfective, like he tells us, or that it means both perfective
}> and past tense, which is NOT what he tells us and leaves us with
}> a more chaotic language. This is not what we seek, so we ignore
}> the examples that don't fit his descriptions.
}
}Once again, I am not maintaining that -pu' means past tense, but rather that
}the aspect "completed" is most often best translated by an English past tense,
}which includes simple, past, present perfect, or past perfect tenses.
Those tenses are often used, as are future perfect and present.
}And
}conversely, except in unusual cases, an English past tense is best
translated }into Klingon using -pu'.
No.
}> Note the example given in Conversational Klingon above. You've
}> researched well, but the simple truth is, Okrand has explained
}> the grammar on this clearly in TKD, even if his examples don't
}> consistently fit the descriptions, and in person he has clearly
}> described how this works.
Note this, mIHayl. Seethe with annoyance if you wish, that tlhIngan Hol
usage is controlled by a small cabal of self-proclaimed experts who claim to
have spoken with Marc Okrand and who dare to say that what he says
supersedes what he wrote twelve years ago. Curse us for requiring that you
conform to our unreasonable proclamations before we admit you to the inner
circle of those whose proclamations we will endorse. Whisper about how we
have blindly indoctrinated one another in inbred intellectualism. Heck,
maybe it's true. It was fun to write.
}Your definition of -pu' as defining an action of the verb that occurs before
}the time context of the sentence is not the canonical definition, which is
}simply that the action is completed.
You're acting on incomplete information.
Grrr. I hate writing these posts -- not that I hate the fact that you are
thinking and challenging usages, that is good, like when SuStel overturned
the way we used verbs of saying -- but I hate the dance we do to avoid
mentioning the fact that Marc Okrand is human. We play a game to cover for
his errors, and so does he. Sometimes he backfits them to be correct, as in
the reversed toasts. Sometimes he mocks them, as in KGT where he derides
many of the errors he had made in TKW as puq Hol, baby talk.
Klingon perfective is used more than English perfective but it does not mean
that the action was completed in the past. It can easily mean that the
action will be completed in the future or is completed now.
Qov [email protected]
Beginners' Grammarian