tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jan 18 23:03:41 1995
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aspect
>Subject: Re: easy sentences
>Date: 95-01-18 01:19:13 EST
>From: [email protected] (Jeremy Cowan)
>I know that this has been previously discused (and possibly even concluded)
>here, but I am still confused. QongtaH does not seem accurate to me.
>QonglI' seems like the word that should be used. (BTW, I believe that
>charghwI' would agree that Qong puqpu' is not incorrect.) Looking over
>TKD p.42 s.4.2.7:Aspect, I am still confused.
It has been discussed already, but not really concluded. Aspect is probably
one of the most illusive features of Klingon, and I hope I'm not out of line
for making this post before someone who's officially qualified to deal with
grammar. Well, it's not really about grammar, it's more about the concept
underneath the grammar.
Check TKD 4.2.7 where it compares {-taH} and {-lI'}. It says that both are
continuous, but {-lI'} always implies a goal or definite stopping point of
some sort, not necessarily intention. {-taH} does not indicate absense of a
goal or stopping point, it just means that the speaker decided not to
indicate anything about a goal of the action. The goal-oriented part of the
aspect is shown explicitly thru {-lI'} but {-taH} does not mean that there
can be no goal whatsoever.
To drive the whole thing home, {-pu'} is the perfective, indicating that a
verb is *done* or *complete*. {-ta'} shows that it is done, and it was
accomplished with the goal of its completion or accomplishment already in
mind. {-taH} is progressive, indicating that a verb is not complete. {-lI'}
shows that there is a goal in mind for the completion of the verb. It could
be thought of like this: As an incomplete verb takes {-taH}, and a complete
one takes {-pu'}; an incomplete goal-oriented verb takes {-lI'}, and a
complete goal-oriented one takes {ta'}; i.e., a {-lI'} verb takes {-ta'}
after it's complete, showing that its goal is just now accomplished.
And just to clear up one little basic misunderstanding of perfective aspect,
one that ~mark has always done a good job of doing, but perhaps hasn't
reached everyone, is that a verb with {-pu'} is not necessarily an action in
the past, as most people make it out to be. Perfective shows that an action
IS, WAS, or WILL BE *DONE* or *COMPLETE.* The tense (is, was, or will be) is
not shown by aspect. The degree of completion is what's at hand.
Guido