tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Apr 13 18:28:08 2014
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Re: [Tlhingan-hol] Translating the past
<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=windows-1252"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;"><div>What I’m about to say is not intended to be an argument, or an attempt to establish my authority over this area of grammar. I’m just trying to explain more clearly than I have in the past the way I’ve always seen this.</div><div><br></div><div>English has three tenses. Every verb expression in English needs to have the “right” tense, or you’ve made a grammatical mistake. It is formal and necessary when speaking or writing every English sentence.</div><div><br></div><div>Meanwhile, tense is very vague. There’s now (present tense), before now (past tense) and after now (future tense).</div><div><br></div><div>Klingon has no tense. Or it has an infinite number of tenses, depending on how you see it.</div><div><br></div><div>When it comes to time, “A Klingon may be inaccurate, but he is never approximate.”</div><div><br></div><div>In other words, any sentence I express in Klingon may have a time stamp or not. There is no grammatical requirement for there to be one. Instead, if time is important to that expression, you express it explicitly as a time stamp, or through context (like the implied “now” in an active conversation, like if I say, “Hand me that disruptor!” I should not have to add “Now”, because context really ought to give you enough clue about that).</div><div><br></div><div>The perfective suffixes have nothing to do with tense.</div><div><br></div><div>I want to be clear about this.</div><div><br></div><div>Tense refers to the span of time while the action of a verb happens.</div><div><br></div><div>The Perfective refers not to the action of a verb, but instead to the completion of the action of the verb. The action has a duration, but the completion is an event. </div><div><br></div><div>So, a verb with a time stamp and without a perfective suffix tells you the time the action of the verb occurs. A verb with a time stamp with a perfective suffix tells you when the completion of the action of the verb occurs.</div><div><br></div><div>In other words, does the time stamp refer to the action of the verb, or the completion of the verb at that time? With {-taH} , you have a time stamp and you know that the completion of the action of the verb hasn’t happened yet and it’s not particularly foreseeable from here from the time perspective of the time stamp. With {-lI’} the completion hasn’t happened at the time stamp, but there is a conscious goal of completion at that time, with the completion of it expected within a reasonable sense of “soon”. The time stamp is “here”, and I can see the completion “from here."</div><div><br></div><div>With {-pu’}, the time stamp refers to the completion of the action. Not to the action of the verb. To it’s completion.</div><div><br></div><div>With {-ta’}, the time stamp refers to the completion of the action, and the intent or sense of mission behind that completion.</div><div><br></div><div>Completion is a big deal in Klingon. The grammar bends to it, just as English grammar bends to tense.</div><div><br></div><div>Now, that’s the ideal of how I thought this language should work with no tense, but with perfective suffixes. That said, I get frustrated with some canon because it seems sloppy on this point. The language would have been cooler if the canon had been more precise in this time framework.</div><div><br></div><div>So, I think that sometimes, the perfective has been used to express that at the time stamp the completion of the action of the verb was in the past. And that makes everything muddier. I don’t like it.</div><div><br></div><div>But this isn’t my language, and the guy whose language it is doesn’t apparently care enough to preserve this cool way the language could have been.</div><div><br></div><div>So, based on canon, it appears that when a verb has a time stamp and a perfective suffix, the time stamp indicates either a time duration or event during which the completion of the verb occurs (the cool way the language could have been precise), or the time stamp indicates a time frame when the completion of the action is in the past (the sloppy way the language was allowed to evolve).</div><br><div>
<div><div>lojmIt tI’wI’ nuv ‘utlh</div><div>Door Repair Guy, Retired Honorably</div></div><div><br></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
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<br><div><div>On Apr 12, 2014, at 11:44 PM, Robyn Stewart <<a href="mailto:[email protected]";>[email protected]</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div lang="EN-CA" link="blue" vlink="purple" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;"><div class="WordSection1" style="page: WordSection1;"><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: rgb(31, 73, 125);">><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>Could one not say {wa'leS ghaH HoHlu'pu'}, indicating that by tomorrow he will have gotten himself killed? This sentence uses perfective<span style="color: rgb(31, 73, 125);"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: rgb(31, 73, 125);">><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>but not in any past sense, Klingon cultural attitudes toward counting one's chickens notwithstanding. If grammar allows such a construction, it<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span style="color: rgb(31, 73, 125);">><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>would divorce -pu' and -ta' from any connection with the past, except insofar as the past is more somewhat more certain than the future.<o:p></o:p></div></div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br clear="all">I don’t think there is any controversy about that sentence. It parallels ghorgh tujchoHpu’ bIQ? I don’t believe anyone is arguing that perfective implies past or past requires perfective, and if they were, I would think they were wrong.<o:p></o:p></div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p> </o:p></div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">The controversial area is:<o:p></o:p></div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">If an action is single and completed, is a timestamp sufficient, or does it also require a perfective aspect suffix?<br>Can <DuqIp’a’?> mean “Did she hit you?” [once] or only “Does she/did she hit you?” [generally] or “Will she hit you?”<br>One of the sticking points is interpretation of the word “usually” in the second paragraph of TKD 4.2.7.<o:p></o:p></div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p> </o:p></div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">- Qov<br><br><o:p></o:p></div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p> </o:p></div></div>_______________________________________________<br>Tlhingan-hol mailing list<br><a href="mailto:[email protected]"; style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">[email protected]</a><br><a href="http://mail.kli.org/mailman/listinfo/tlhingan-hol"; style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">http://mail.kli.org/mailman/listinfo/tlhingan-hol</a></div></blockquote></div><br></body></html>_______________________________________________
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