tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Mar 04 21:18:46 1999
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: Placement of aspect suffixes
- From: [email protected]
- Subject: Re: Placement of aspect suffixes
- Date: Fri, 5 Mar 1999 00:18:27 EST
In a message dated 3/4/1999 5:37:14 PM US Mountain Standard Time,
[email protected] writes:
<< Aspect is a condition. It is not an event.
>...But, we will
>find some excellent devices by combining {-choH} and {-qa'} and type 7s.
Certainly -- as long as you don't try to call these devices "aspect". >>
=====================
Okay. I, too, have learned that Aspect is a condition, a way of looking at the
state of the verb, a manner of the verb's action.
I infer from some of charghwI's writings that his understanding of Aspect's
perfective is a vector pointing to an Event which must have reached completion
before the time of the sentence. He seems to be stuck on some ideas of
partitive-ness, but we have not brought this into the discussion before now.
Even in Chinese, {-wan} shows only the condition of "completion'" (i.e.,
perfective), not when the event occurred or even how else it occurred. We
also have {-je} for the progressive. However, unlike Balto-Slavonic languages
which have another prefix infixed upon the verb for Imperfective, Mandarin
uses forms of {mei-you} which mean "does not have."
Chinese has "change of status" particles in addition to verb suffixes. Unlike
Klingon grammarians, Chinese grammarians consider these part of the realm of
Aspect, also.
peHruS