tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue May 20 00:38:22 2003
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RE: JangmeH toch De'wI' lo'
- From: "Sangqar (Sean Healy)" <[email protected]>
- Subject: RE: JangmeH toch De'wI' lo'
- Date: Tue, 20 May 2003 05:34:13 +0000
>So, am I just completely wrong on this...lol. I always believed that these
>type seven suffixes were "tense-makers." My mother and father started
>speaking Klingon to me when I was about twelve, and every time they used
>these suffixes (when I could pick them out as they spoke) I thought they
>indicated when something happened. So, something like, "jISup" can be
>translated as, "I jump," "I jumped," and "I will jump"??? What else can be
>translated from that simple sentence? And what else do I need to know
>about the type seven suffixes...help me here, I'm drowning :)
Okay, here's how I understand it, but help from the BG (or former BGs or
other experts) would not be unappreciated.
Every sentence in Klingon has a time context. This time context can be
explicitly stated, or it can be implicit. (For stylistic reasons, an author
might delibrately leave the time context ambiguous, but that's not germane
to this discussion.)
{pu'} means that the action of the sentence is completed relative to the
time context of the sentence. It is usually translated by an English
perfect tense (have done, had done, will have done), but it could be
translated by something else. {tlhIngan Hol mu'ghom vIlaDpu'} means "I
have/had/will have read TKD". If you make the time context of the sentence
past, then it means "I had read TKD", for example:
tetlhvam vImuvDI', tlhIngan Hol mu'ghom vIlaDpu'
When I joined this list, I had (already) read TKD
Or you could make the time context future:
wa'leS tlhIngan Hol mu'ghom vIlaDpu'
Tomorrow, I will have read TKD
This implies that you have not yet completed the action, but will by
tomorrow. (As some will no doubt point out unless I add this disclaimer,
this is only an implication - grammatically, this could mean you finished it
some time in the past - either way, when tomorrow comes, it will be
completed. If Klingon pragmatics are anything like English, then saying the
above sentence when the act was in fact already completed would be
misleading, though still true.)
{taH} means that relative to the time context of the sentence, the action is
still going on. It means "is/was/will be doing" (although it is not
necessarily translated by that English construction).
tlhIngan Hol mu'ghom vIlaDtaH
I'm (in the middle of) reading TKD
Here I don't explcitily state a time context, and there's no context to give
it one, so I defaulted to using present tense in English.
{ta'} means the same as {pu'}, but with the added distinction that the
action was deliberately undertaken (that is, it was not an accident). Note
that {pu'} does not mean it was not deliberately undertaken; {pu'} is
neutral in this regard.
{lI'} means the same as {taH}, except that it adds the meaning that the
action was undertaken with a goal or a definite stopping point in mind. As
with {pu'} versus {ta'}, {taH} is neutral in this regard.
Marc Okrand originally intended the type 7 suffixes to indicate tense, but
changed his mind partway through (or so I have been led to understand by
comments on this list). Several of the examples in TKD were wirtten while
they were tense markers, and were not retranslated after the change. So
it's quite easy to be confused.
-Sangqar
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