tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Nov 11 05:53:40 1994
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: A poem
- From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: A poem
- Date: Fri, 11 Nov 94 8:53:31 EST
- In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>; from "Mark J. Reed" at Nov 10, 94 11:31 am
According to Mark J. Reed:
>
> charghwI' writes:
> \ According to David Trimboli:
> \
> \ > "qaSchoHpu' may'"
> \
> \ This means, "The battle changes to have completed happening."
> \ In other words, it is now over. It just finished. Drop the
> \ {-pu'} and I think you will have what you want. "The battle
> \ begins to happen." Your poem has nothing to do with the
> \ completion of the battle, so the perfective is not what you
> \ want. I know that you intend to apply the perfective to
> \ {-choH}, but that's not how it works. Both the perfective and
> \ {-choH} apply themselves to the main verb. You are saying that
> \ the verb is complete in its action and this involves a change
> \ of state. If anything, it emphasizes completion as being
> \ different from the action that preceeded it.
>
> Uhm, that's one interpretation, but I don't think it's necessarily
> the [only] correct one. My impression of the verb suffixes is that they are
> ordered because they get applied in that order, conceptually.
> "qaSchoHpu'" to me means that the changing-to-happen is complete, not that
> the happening is changing to be complete . . .
While I am not claiming that my authority discounts yours, I
just want to reiterate that it is not merely that I didn't
think of this possibility. I still think it is wrong. I think
that the action of the verb has had a change of state {-choH}
and that it is complete {-pu'}. If it is the case that this can
imply that the change of state is in completion, but the action
is not, then somebody has to correct my basic understanding of
how these suffixes work. I don't think this interpretation is
valid.
> Of course, some form with "tagh" might be a better way to convey the idea:
>
> qaS 'e' tagh may' "the battle begins to happen"
Fine. I like this better. It might be simpler and more accurate
to the English to say, {taghpu' may'}.
charghwI'