tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jul 14 11:03:06 1998

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Re: -pu'

---Quvar muHwI'  wrote:
>[AA wrote] 
> >  Please what <is> the correct use of the verb suffix {X-pu'}?[...]
> In a story that happens in the past, don't use {-pu'}
> -pu' means it has surely happened:

Not quite. To express certainty, use a V6.

The perfective, /-pu'/ or /-ta'/, indicates that the action of the
verb *is already complete* at the time the sentence is set.  So for a
sentence with no time stamp, it's just stating that at some unknown
point, the action was or will be complete.  The point of the sentence
is more that the action is/was/will be complete than that the action
occurs at all.

vIlegh - "I see" "I saw" "I will see."
vIleghpu' - "I have seen" "I had seen"  "I will have seen"

Here is an example that makes this clearer.

vaghHu' targhmey vItoghchoH
Five days ago I started counting targs.

(If I said /vItoghchoHpu'/ you wouldn't know *when* I started counting
targs, only that five days ago I had already started.)

vaghHu' wa' targh vIlegh
Five days ago I saw one targ.

loSHu' vagh targh vIlegh
Four days ago I saw five targs.

vaj loSHu' vagh targh vItogh.
Thus four days ago I counted five targs.

(That is, at that time, I perfomed that action, no perfective).

'ej loSHu' jav targh vItoghta'.
And four days ago I had counted six targs.

(At the end of the day, four days ago, I had completed counting six
targs: five that day and one the day before.  Note that {chaq loSHu'
po loS targh neH vItoghta'} "Maybe four days ago in the morning I had
counted only four targhs."  The last two might not have turned up
until the afternoon.  Some people will argue that this sentence is
inacurate because I haven't counted all those targs until the end of
that day. It's a matter of deciding whether loSHu' means at all times
four days ago or at some time four days ago.)

DaH wa'maH targh vItoghta'.
Now I've counted ten targs.

wa'leS targh law' vIlegh 'e' vItul.
I hope I'll see lots of targs tomorrow.

wa'leS wa'maH targh vIleghchugh, vaj cha'maH targh vItoghta'.
If I see ten targs tomorrow then I'll have counted twenty targs.

If you say, /SochHu' BermudaDaq malengpu'/ you're claiming that as of
last week you had completed your travels in Bermuda.

Whether an action is complete at the time you are relating it is
completely irrelevant to aspect choice.  

wa'Hu' vISop - I ate it yesterday.
wa'Hu' vISoppu' - I had eaten it yesterday (maybe on purpose, maybe
you just happened to eat it that day)
wa'Hu' vISoplI' - I was eating it up yesterday.
wa'Hu' vISoptaH - I was eating it yesterday.
wa'Hu' vISopta' - I had [deliberately] eaten it yesterday.

The classic example of future perfective is ghorgh tujchoHpu' bIQ 
"When will the water be hot?"  See how that works?  It could be "When
had the water become hot?" but that's not a very useful question, so
you hear the useful meaning.

I know that when you are translating meaning from a language with
tense to one without it is terribly tempting to add SOMETHING to
indicate the tense.  If it is all-fired important your reader know the
event has passed, simply slap a date or time on it. 

One reason this is so painful and frustrating to learn is that TKD
explains it very superficially, and even misuses it *because Marc
Okrand changed his mind about /-pu'/ part way through!  He was
originally going to make it a past tense suffix, and some of the
examples reflect that.  (Apparently the word /yaS/ originally meant
prisoner, too, which explains why there is so much hitting of officers
in the examples). So the one place you SHOULD be able to go for
examples is confusing.  Marc has explained this in more detail in
person.

See the FAQ for another explanation, if your brain doesn't fit around
this one.

I'm really sorry this can get so ugly.  For people who haven't learned
a language where aspect is a big deal "completed action" sounds like
it should mean past.

Perhaps as a summary: if your point is completion of the action, use
perfective.  If your point is the action, don't use it.

yaj'a'?
==
Qov - Beginners' Grammarian 

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