tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Feb 18 20:30:37 1999
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: ma'veq: It's official
ja' "Adam Snyder" <[email protected]>:
>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.
"In the past" is firmly in the realm of "tense". Klingon doesn't do
anything special to distinguish between past, present, or future. If
you just mean it happened in the past, you don't want to use perfective
aspect.
>>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).
There is no such thing as Klingon "completed past action". There is
"completed action" (in two flavors), and there is "ongoing action"
(also in two flavors). There is nothing to indicate past. Perfective
aspect can easily be used on a future action:
ghorgh tujchoHpu' bIQ -- When will the water be hot?
If you want to express past, you have to explicitly set the context so
people understand that you're talking about something that occurred in
the past. Use a time stamp, or refer to some other event that we all
recognize as happening at some time.
>I am not trying to say, "I used to think...", I am actually trying to say
>"I had thought..." which is completely different.
*I* don't see much difference. They both seem to say something like
"I thought ... once, but now I don't."
>How do I know when I had thought something? I had just thought it in
>general, not at a specific time.
How do you know when you had thought something? Obviously, you are the
one who thought it, so you *should* know when you thought it.
>*chutmey vIlobbe'qang 'e' vIjatlh neH. HIchergh.*
va. bIHeSqu'be', 'ach bIbIvbej. bIQoSbe'mo' qacherghqangbe'.
-- ghunchu'wI'