tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Oct 13 21:15:56 1995
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Re: Odd sentence in phrase book
- From: [email protected] (Alan Anderson)
- Subject: Re: Odd sentence in phrase book
- Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 23:15:24 -0500
Matt Treyvaud writes:
>On to the next question. I don't have my TKD right here with me, but I
>was reading it last night and I'm pretty sure I remember the sentence 'I
>wasn't there' translated as {pa'Daq jIHpu'be'}. And isn't the be' in the
>wrong spot? It says that it follows the concept being negated in the
>'Verbs' section; I would have thought the concept being negated here is
>'I am' rather than 'perfective'. What's going on here?
TKD page 172: "I wasn't there." {pa' jIHpu'be'}
Looks right to me. I don't want to say {pa' jIHbe'pu'} -- that's
something like "I have *not-been* there." What I want to say is
"I *have-not* been there." It's negating the completion of the act
of being there. The way you are thinking about it, it would be
the completion of the negation of being there. I would take it as
a very strange way to say "I have been somewhere besides there."
-- ghunchu'wI' batlh Suvchugh vaj batlh SovchoH vaj