tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Jun 17 02:16:20 2012
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Re: [Tlhingan-hol] Time and Type 7 verb suffixes
<p><br>
De'vID:<br>
> > What would be a counterexample to his (and my) interpretation of the sentence from TKD p.40 about the meaning of a verb when a Type 7 suffix is absent is an instance from canon of a verb expressing a perfective or continuous aspect but which does not have the corresponding suffix. And I don't think there's any such example from canon.</p>
<p>ghunchu'wI':<br>
> I can think of one immediately: {nughoS jagh} from the Conversational<br>
> Klingon battle vignette.</p>
<p>I don't see this as a counterexample at all. Indeed, I see it as a very strong confirmation of the interpretation that the absence of {-taH} changes the meaning of the sentence. As written, it means "An/the enemy approaches us" or "enemies approach us". It was spoken apparently in the middle of a battle, while the speaker's ship is cloaked, and just after he has been informed the engine is overheating.</p>
<p>TKD p.40 says that if a verb lacks {-taH}, it is (usually) not an action that is completed or continuous. I think we should take TKD at its word and interpret {nughoS jagh} as indicating an action that is neither complete nor continuous. </p>
<p>Here's a way to fill in the context that makes sense of the above: The speaker's ship is engaged in a battle with an enemy ship, and has the enemy on the run. The speaker's ship is cloaked. Unfortunately, due to damage and/or going too fast, the engine begins to overheat, giving their position and damage status away to the enemy. The enemy turns around to confront them. The speaker (presumably the tactical officer) informs the captain: {nughoS jagh}. "The enemy comes towards us." The action is not complete. The action is also not continuous, because a moment ago the enemy was heading away. He doesn't say {nughoSchoH jagh} because the change of state is already indicated by context. Also, it is a status update: a statement of fact (general truths are indicated by a lack of aspect). </p>
<p>I'm actually inclined to think that MO *deliberately* wrote this as {nughoS} rather than {nughoStaH}, since the sentence with {-taH} appears in TKD as the first example to illustrate the use of {-taH}. Furthermore, the sentences immediately before and after ({tujqu'choH QuQ} and {chay' jura'}) both come verbatim straight out of TKD (p.170), and the rest of the lines come from the movies or TKD except for one. This strongly indicates that he took {nughoStaH} from TKD and then *modified* it by taking off the {-taH} (and adding {jagh}). If the presence of {-taH} is *optional* as others have claimed, he would've left it in.</p>
<p>Indeed, in the context of the surrounding battle dialogue, {nughoStaH jagh} with {-taH} doesn't make sense. If the enemy ship is continuously approaching us, the captain would presumably be already aware of it. I suppose there might be contexts in which it makes sense for an officer to say to the captain, "The enemy was approaching us before, still approaches us, and will continue to approach us", but it's definitely not after "the engine is beginning to overheat". OTOH, "the enemy comes!" works perfectly as an alert from a tactical officer to the captain.</p>
<p>This is seriously a very, very strong confirmation that {-taH} is not optional and changes the meaning of the sentence by its absence. In other to see it any other way, not only do you have to ignore what TKD p.40 actually says about the absence of {-taH}, you'd have to assume that MO managed to copy several sentences verbatim from TKD, but dropped {-taH} even though its absence is (according to what I think is a misinterpretation of TKD p.40) optional, while paying enough attention to the sentence to have added a {jagh} for clarity. I just don't buy it. I think he dropped it deliberately because the sentence would've been wrong, in this context, with {-taH}, *despite* his intention to keep the sentence as close to the existing sentence from TKD as possible.</p>
<p>--<br>
De'vID</p>
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