tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Nov 28 12:23:00 1994
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Re: targh lut
On Sun, 27 Nov 1994, William H. Martin wrote:
> According to Terry Donnelly:
>
> The only negative comment I have at first glance is that you
> seem to miss the point about tense in Klingon. Please don't
> take this as an overall negative. I love the overall flavor of
> this story. Meanwhile, Klingon does not have tense. Using
> aspect as if it were tense doesn't really work. Aspect is used
> to mark the degree of completion of the action relative to the
> time setting of the story set by context.
>
> In other words, you should use the perfective, etc. to
> specifically mark verbs which describe a degree of completion
> DIFFERENT from the overall time sense of the context. I'll try
> to describe this better as we go along.
>
> > wa' jaj tachDaq jupwI' vIghompu'. 'Itlaw' ghaH. //qaStaH nuq?//
> > vItlhobta'. //qatlh nuv'e' SoptaHbogh targh Darur?//
>
> {vIghompu'} is the first verb you have placed the aspect marker
> on for the perfective where it does not belong. You clearly
> want to say, "One day, I met my friend in a bar." Instead, you
> have said, "One day, I had met my friend at a bar." See? It
> would be much more Klingon in character were it:
>
> tachDaq jupwI' vIghom.
>
> If you don't like the sparceness of this, you could combine it
> with the next sentence:
>
> tachDaq jupwI' vIghomDI' 'Itlaw' ghaH 'e' vItu'.
jIQoch. I think Terry's use of the perfective aspect (both {-pu'} &
{-ta'}) is correct. Since he is presently telling a narrative of a
sequence of events which occured once, are completed and have been brought
to an end, I think the perfective aspect is appropriate.
In the example above: tachDaq jupwI' vIghomDI' 'Itlaw' ghaH 'e' vItu'.
(When I meet my friend in the bar, I find he's apparently depressed,)
using the null aspect, this would indicate that whenever I meet
my friend in a bar, he's seemingly depressed. The reader has no way of
knowing that you're really talking about a specific event that occured once.
> majQa'. I enjoyed the story very much.
lutvam vItIvqu' je.
> > Terry Donnelly
> charghwI'
yoDtargh