tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jun 15 02:27:02 2012

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Re: [Tlhingan-hol] Time and Type 7 verb suffixes

De'vID ([email protected]) 

<p>lojmIt tI&#39;wI&#39; nuv:<br>
&gt;&gt; {wa&#39;Hu&#39; &#39;uQ vISop.}<br>
&gt;&gt;<br>
&gt;&gt; I don&#39;t believe that is a grammatical error, even though it describes<br>
&gt;&gt; a single event that occurred in its entirety during the time span of<br>
&gt;&gt; the time stamp. I honestly believe you are the only person in the<br>
&gt;&gt; Universe who might claim that it is an error because it lacks<br>
&gt;&gt; {-pu&#39;}.</p>
<p>I don&#39;t believe it&#39;s a *grammatical* error, but I don&#39;t think it means what you seem to think it means.</p>
<p>Note that on TKD p.40 it says that verbs without a Type 7 suffix can be translated, when the context is appropriate, by the future tense.  But it says nothing about the past tense.  I think that if a verb without a Type 7 suffix can be translated into *either* future or past tense, MO would have said so here.  The fact that he omitted mentioning the past tense here is, I think, because an aspectless verb usually cannot refer to an event in the past (since past events are typically either completed or ongoing until the present).</p>

<p>SuStel:<br>
&gt; It is not an error. It just doesn&#39;t mean exactly what you think it means. It means that eating dinner was happening at some time yesterday. It would not be used to tell a story like &quot;Yesterday I sat at the table, ate dinner, and then got up.&quot; That story would require perfective suffixes on its verbs. But it could be used, say, to confirm that you didn&#39;t skip a meal yesterday.</p>

<p>I concur with SuStel&#39;s interpretation of {wa&#39;Hu&#39; &#39;uQ vISop}.  </p>
<p>Since people generally eat dinner every day, I tried to think of an example with an activity that someone might do once every several days.  So suppose someone has an exercise schedule that rotates between {yIt}, {qet}, {Qal}, and {leS}.  </p>

<p>If he wanted to say, &quot;I swam (a single, completed event) yesterday&quot;, he would say {wa&#39;Hu&#39; jIQalpu&#39;} or {wa&#39;Hu&#39; jIQalta&#39;}.  {wa&#39;Hu&#39; jIQal} *cannot* have that meaning, because it implies (per TKD p.40) that the action of swimming is neither completed nor continuous.</p>

<p>OTOH, if he was asked which day of the exercise schedule yesterday was, he could say {wa&#39;Hu&#39; jIQal} &quot;I swam yesterday&quot; (i.e., it is a general statement of truth that I swam yesterday, without reference to a specific completed event). </p>

<p>So both {wa&#39;Hu&#39; jIQal} and {wa&#39;Hu&#39; jIQalpu&#39;} can be used to describe that he went swimming yesterday, but the suffix {-pu&#39;} is not *optional* in that its presence or absence changes the meaning of what is said about the action.</p>

<p>--<br>
De&#39;vID</p>

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