tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Mar 27 07:38:57 2006

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Re: double-checking

Terrence Donnelly ([email protected]) [KLI Member] 

Neither {-pu'} or {-ta'} are past tense markers, and
you can easily imagine future completion sentences:
{wa'Hu' vIHoHta'} "(By) tomorrow I will have killed
him."  One tendancy of beginners is to assume that
when writing a story, one of these suffixes goes
on every verb, since we (usually) write stories
in English in the past tense.  But the only verbs
that would really take one of these suffixes are
verbs describing actions completed _before_ the
time of the story.  So simply describing an
event that occured in the past doesn't mean that
the verbs take the completion suffixes.

I think this is more a stylistic issue than a
grammar one.  To me, adding either suffix draws
attention to the fact of completion, while the
unsuffixed verb simply states the fact.  So the
question becomes whether it is necessary to the
meaning of the sentence to draw attention to the
completion.  I also tend to think that Klingons
tend to use their language efficiently: if a
suffix isn't absolutely necessary, they don't use
it.

"Our gods are dead" isn't a statement of past tense
or of completion; it's a statement of their current
state of non-existence. "Klingon warriors killed
them a millenium ago" does refer to a past event,
but the time stamp {wa'SaD ben} clearly establishes
the time, and since we know the gods are all
dead, the warriors must have completed the job.
I would interpret the sentence with {-pu'} to
mean "A thousand years ago, the ancient Klingon
warriors had already killed them".  This puts a
weird emphasis on the completion: if the thousand-
year mark isn't when they killed them, then what
is the significance of referring to a
thousand years ago, and why don't you just tell us
when they did kill them.

So, I still contend that neither verb needs {-pu'}.

-- ter'eS

--- Shane MiQogh <[email protected]> wrote:

> It was done, completed, so i dont' see why -pu'
> wouldn't be used.
> Terrence Donnelly <[email protected]>
> wrote:  You don't really need the {-pu'} suffixes on
> the
> verbs, but otherwise it looks fine, to me anyway.
> 
> -- ter'eS
> 
> --- naHQun wrote:
> 
> > So my manger had me translate this sentence for
> him,
> > and then write it in pIqaD on his whiteboard in
> his
> > office.
> > 
> > "Our gods are dead. Ancient Klingon warriors slew
> > them a millennium ago."
> > 
> > Which I translated as:
> > 
> > > SuvwI'pu' tIQ.>
> > 
> > qar'a'?
> > Or do I need to be thankful it was a whiteboard
> and
> > not a tattoo?
> > 
> > ~naHQun
> > 
> > p.s. My e-mail spell checker told me 
> > should be "Klingon".

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