tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Jun 23 18:35:57 2012
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Re: [Tlhingan-hol] Time and Type 7 verb suffixes
<p><br>
SuStel:<br>
> Do we all understand that there's a difference between what a Klingon-speaker expresses and what the English translation expresses? The former is determined by context; the latter is determined by English grammatical rules. In the case of aspect, the two expressions *always* mean different things; only context can make one mean the same thing as the other. To determine exactly what a Klingon sentence is expressing, therefore, you *must* look to the context in which it is spoken. The English translation can only guide you to what the speaker has in mind, unless that translation has been carefully and awkwardly constructed to include everything in the original and to exclude everything not in the original.</p>
<p>Since the problem seems to be that some people are reading something from the English translations back into the Klingon which are absent from the original, I tried to come up with some examples in Cantonese Chinese (which like Klingon grammatically marks aspect but not tense) to translate into Klingon and back to illustrate why aspect markers cannot be optional. Of course I have to explain everything in English, but I think I can make things clear.</p>
<p>I started by trying to imagine a variant of Cantonese where the aspect markers are optional. I found very quickly that it became impossible to succinctly express many ideas, because I was forced to explicitly negate every aspect marker that didn't apply (and whose inapplicability cannot be inferred from context). I believe that Klingon would suffer from the same problem. This is a *logical* consequence of introducing a rule that aspect markers are optional, which is inescapable. </p>
<p>SuStel has already given a technical definition of aspect. Intuitively, to me, aspect is a kind of abstraction that allows you to express a class of related verbal ideas using one base verb. In a language without aspect like English, you often need two separate verbs to express the same related verbal ideas. </p>
<p>I found one Klingon verb which has a direct correspondent in Chinese but which does not exist in English: {lol} "be in a martial arts pose". So {lol} means to *be* in a stance, whereas {loltaH} means to *maintain* a stance.</p>
<p>I don't know how Klingons name their martial arts stances, but in Chinese they're often named after animals:</p>
<p>{Sargh lol} "he is in the Horse stance, he makes the Horse stance"</p>
<p>{Sargh loltaH} "he maintains the Horse stance"</p>
<p>The above describe distinctly different actions.</p>
<p>An instructor might bark:</p>
<p>{vIghro''a' yIlol} "strike the Tiger stance!"</p>
<p>{vIghro''a' yIloltaH} "maintain the Tiger stance!"</p>
<p>If you've watched enough martial arts movies, you'll know what the difference is. You'll also know that if you do one when he means the other, you will be reprimanded.</p>
<p>Another verb which illustrates the difference, but which perhaps requires less cultural background to understand, is {chop} "bite". In Chinese, "bite" without continuous aspect means to bite (essentially the same as the English meaning), whereas with continuous aspect it means to bite down on something and continue to apply force with your jaws. One appropriate translation might be "gnaw", which is just how {choptaH} is glossed.</p>
<p>I can command my {Qogh}:</p>
<p>{'uSDaj chop} "bite his leg! take a bite out of his leg!"</p>
<p>{'uSDaj choptaH} "gnaw on his leg! bite on his leg and don't let go!"</p>
<p>Again, these are distinctly different actions, which are related to each other by continuity.</p>
<p>If {-taH} were optional, i.e., if I can infer nothing by its absence, I wouldn't be able to easily say "take a bite" instead of "gnaw". I'd *have* to say, *{'uSDaj chop 'ach choptaHQo'} or something equally unwieldy. There's just no evidence that Klingon is like this.</p>
<p>There's another pair of verbal ideas which are related in the same way in both Chinese and Klingon and for which the Klingon pair has appeared in canon. The verb "grasp, get a hold of" when marked with continuous aspect becomes "hold onto" ({'uch} -> {'uchtaH}). Again, the base verb with and without the continuous aspect marker describe distinctly different (though related) actions. Dropping {-taH} changes the meaning. </p>
<p>This is true even though in many contexts, you can get away with saying {'uch} even when you really mean {'uchtaH}. For example, {qama' yI'uch} *usually* implies {Da'uchpu'DI' yI'uchtaH}. This doesn't mean {-taH} is *optional*, just that people will often understand you even if what you say isn't completely "by the book".</p>
<p>The difference between {'uch} and {'uchtaH} reminds me of something. I grew up around both Chinese speakers who learned English as a second language as adults (immigrants from Chinese countries to North America), and English speakers who learned Chinese as a second language (either the descendants of such immigrants, or non-Chinese who learned Chinese typically in university). You can tell that someone isn't a native English speaker by the way they drop tense markers ("Last week I visit my friend"). The analogous thing is true for Chinese and aspect. </p>
<p>In Chinese, you *have* to say (what in Klingon would be) {'uchtaH} when you mean {'uchtaH} and not {'uch}. People will understand you anyway if you drop the continuous aspect marker, but it sounds like the way "Last week I visit my friend" sounds in English. That is, it makes you sound like you're not a native speaker of the language. Based on what I know of Klingon, I believe the same thing is true there as well. (But of course with Klingon we have no native speakers whose intuition we can check against.) </p>
<p>--<br>
De'vID</p>
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