tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Apr 15 18:26:58 1996
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perfective and "today"
- From: [email protected] (Alan Anderson)
- Subject: perfective and "today"
- Date: Mon, 15 Apr 1996 20:29:31 -0500
charghwI' writes:
>> Well, for once and for all:
>> - The book here that morning.
>> - I wrote the sentence late that afternoon.
>> - I meant "My book has arrived [earlier] today". (=the act of arrival was
>> completed by the time I wrote that).
>>
>> Is my use of -pu' then in error or not?
>
>I think it is okay. It comes down to the subtle difference
>between what in English would be stated either as, "My book
>arrived today," or "My book has arrived today." The first is
>not perfective. It is simple past. The second is present
>perfect, and so is perfective. As you've stated in English, you
>used present perfect, which is perfective and the {-pu'} is
>appropriate.
I don't think I'm taking this personally or rationalizing in order
to save face; I sincerely believe I'm trying to straighten out some
grammatical confusion. However, I'm starting to get the distinct
impression that it is *my* confusion that needs fixing!
"My book has arrived today" still looks suspicious to me. It doesn't
carry the same idea for me as "Today, my book has arrived." The first
is arguably correct, with "today" referring to "arrive", and the "had"
indicating perfective modifying "arrive today". But the second one is
what I think {DaHjaj pawpu' paqwIj} means, and that still looks to me
like the book's arrival was complete today. It does *not* look to me
like the book's arrival was *completed* today.
>ghunchu'wI' is quite good at using Klingon and has a good point
>that beginning Klingonists often use the perfective when they
>mean to use simple past and that useage is indeed wrong, but I
>feel like he is a bit fixated on this and is not recognizing
>that the present perfective does exist and sometimes people use
>it on purpose and it is not always wrong.
Again, I notice that my real complaint is more with the use of a term
indicating a day, and not with the {-pu'} itself. {DaH pawpu' paqwIj}
or {DaHjaj pov pawpu'} would get right past my {-pu'} detector with no
trouble at all.
>I feel like he has created his own strict and not altogether
>accurate definition of what perfective is and demands that
>everyone else accept that definition. The difference between
>tense and aspect is a bit strange and confusing, but there
>really is a difference and as ghunchu'wI' rightly points out, a
>lot of people use the perfective to replace simple past tense.
>The problem I'm seeing with ghunchu'wI' in this argument is
>that he seems to imply that the past perfect is the only valid
>perfective, or maybe he include the future perfect, but he does
>not seem to allow the present perfect to be acceptable.
Present perfect is fine with me: "The book has arrived" certainly makes
sense. The problem I keep seeing is that "it has arrived today" doesn't
mean it did arrive today, and in fact I infer that it arrived earlier.
It's becoming apparent to me that I'm excessively troubled by the use of
"today" and "yesterday" with perfectives. For example:
(1) {wa'Hu' pawpu' paq} "the book had arrived yesterday"
(2) {DaHjaj pawpu' paq} "the book has arrived today"
(3) {wa'leS pawpu' paq} "the book will have arrived tomorrow"
These are all the same idea with a different time stamp, and they all
seem to carry the same meaning to me, but several times now I've seen
people try to use (1) or (2) to mean that the book actually did arrive
on the day referred to, which is *not* how I read them. Would anyone
try to use (3) to predict that the book actually will arrive tomorrow?
I surely wouldn't; it tells me that it will *already* have arrived then.
-- ghunchu'wI' batlh Suvchugh vaj batlh SovchoH vaj