tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Nov 29 10:22:02 1994

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Re: targh lut



>Date: Mon, 28 Nov 1994 19:54:24 -0500
>Originator: [email protected]
>From: "R.B Franklin" <[email protected]>

>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.  

SoH qaQoch jIH.  You, too, are mistaking aspect for tense.  By your logic,
anything that finished by the present time deserves perfective
aspect... which is essentially the same thing as saying that -pu' is for
past tense, which is not the case.  Consider Okrand's own example in CK of
"wa'Hu' jIghung" for "yesterday I was thirst."  You apparently would say
that since that happened then and we're not given it's still happening, he
should have sauid "jIghungpu'".  Not so!  Read over my article on the topic
in HolQeD 2:4, and Okrand's text.  The *tense* of a sentence is its time
relative to present.  In Klingon, this is given by *context*
(e.g. time-phrases like DaHjaj and so on).  The *aspect* is the state of
completion of the activity relative to the time under consideration--not
necessarily the present!  So "wa'Hu' jIghungpu'" would establish the time
as past, and state of the action as completed *as of that time*, which we'd
say in English as "yesterday I had been hungry".  Generally, if you think
of Klingon -pu' and -ta' as translating to English tenses with "have" (I
have been/done, I will have been/done, I had been/done) you won't be too
far off.  Read the article in HolQeD for more examples and support from
Okrandian sentences.

>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.

Not in the least.  There's no indication of "whenever" in this sentence at
all.  Wouldn't you think it odd for a language to have "whenever" as the
*default* unmarked state?  For that, perhaps I might say "reH" at the
beginning or something.

>> > Terry Donnelly

>> charghwI'

>yoDtargh

~mark


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