tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Feb 18 05:01:10 1999
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Re: ma'veq: It's official
- From: "Adam Snyder" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: ma'veq: It's official
- Date: Thu, 18 Feb 1999 08:01:37 -0500
>*** RED ALERT *** RED ALERT *** RED ALERT *** RED ALERT ***
>
>Aspect is not the same thing as tense. Aspect involves the degree of
>completion of an action, and is expressed using Type 7 verb suffixes
>(and a rare syntactic {rIntaH}). Tense involves the time at which an
>action occured in the past or occurs now or will occur in the future.
>Tense is not indicated in Klingon grammar. The English verb forms
>"confuse" and "confused" are both translated {mISmoH} in Klingon.
Okay, a malyprop on my part: please, don't let the word "tense" distract
you. I meant only the idea of things that had happened in the past.
>Are you trying to say something like "I used to think that the prefixes
>confuse me"? That's the only way I can figure out how you'd want to put
>an aspect suffix on {Qub}.
You have just broken the rule yourself. "I used to think..." is not the
same thing as "I had thought...", the former is in the past imperfect
tense, whereas the latter is in the past perfect tense (which translates to
the Klingon "completed past action" from what I can gather).
>But that's just considering the time at which
>you thought it, not the aspect of the thinking.
I am not trying to say, "I used to think...", I am actually trying to say
"I had thought..." which is completely different.
>If you want to say that
>you thought it sometime in the past, get specific and say precisely when
>it was that you thought it.
How do I know when I had thought something? I had just thought it in
general, not at a specific time.
>For example:
>mumISmoH moHaqmey loSHu' 'e' vIQub.
ghorgh bIjatlhlaH, "I though (blah blah) at four o'clock."? bIjatlhlaHbe'.
mu'tlheghvetlh vIlajleHbe'.
>Indeed, there are some things that would make perfect sense if one put
>an aspect suffix on the second verb. But TKD makes it quite clear that
>doing that is grammatically incorrect.
*chutmey vIlobbe'qang 'e' vIjatlh neH. HIchergh.*
--- loD Doq