tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Apr 16 06:08:51 1996
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Re: perfective and "today"
According to Alan Anderson:
>
> 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."
In English, these two sentences have EXACTLY the same meaning.
English allows more variety in word order than Klingon does.
All those helping words establish the function of all the words
in English, while the sequence is much more rigid in Klingon.
I mean, in Klingon, sometimes you can shuffle around the
various words which must come before the object among each
other, and some dependent clauses can follow the subject
(though I'm not wild about even that), and quotations can
preceed or follow the sentence stating that they are spoken,
and that's about it. Everything else in Klingon has one correct
sequence to the words.
So in English, I can say, "Today, I am happy," or "I am happy
today," and the meaning is EXACTLY the SAME. In Klingon, I can
say, {DaHjaj jIQuch.} I cannot say, {jIQuch DaHjaj.} That is
ungrammatical. Your thought that there is a symantic difference
between "Today, I am happy," and "I am happy today," is simpy
inaccurate, and the one Klingon sentence {DaHjaj jIQuch} can be
translated either way.
Similary, "Today, my book has arrived," means exactly the same
thing as, "My book has arrived today." The completion of the
act of arrival occurred today. An additional confusion point is
that a verb like "arrive" implies completion. The focus of the
action of the verb is the completion of the process. Once
something arrives, it has arrived. See?
If something runs, it is not necessarily true that it has run,
since it may continue running for some time, but most of the
time arrivals are rather brief, and in this case, it was the
completion of the arrival which was the focus of the original
speaker. He really did not care about the arrival itself. It
was not like the arrival of a foreign dignitary where the
arrival itself involves some lengthy ceremony of significance.
What he cared about was that he could take the book in his
hands and read it. The completion of the act of arrival was the
only thing he was interested in. The book has arrived today. I
can read it. I can smell it. If I don't mind losing part of a
page, I can even taste some of it. The 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.
I simply think you are wrong. That's the difference between
"The book has arrived today," and "The book had arrived today."
One is present perfect. The other is past perfect. Both are
perfective. On one hand, you argue that aspect is different
from tense, and on the other hand, you argue that aspect cannot
be applied to the present tense. It is that second argument
which falls apart. It is your own rule and has nothing to do
with Klingon or English.
I can understand how you got to this point of confusion. The
difference between aspect and tense is subtle and a bit
strange. Still, the perfective can be applied to the present
tense resulting in something similar to the past tense in
meaning, but there is a difference in focus. The original
writer wanted to focus on the completion of the act, not the
act itself, so the perfective was quite acceptable. The
completion of the act happens in the context of the time stamp
of the sentence, hence present perfect, hence perfective, hence
{-pu'}. Deal with it.
> >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.
You say that because once again, you are forcing the perfective
into the Past Perfect and disallowing the Present Perfect. This
is an artificial distinction.
> >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.
Which means you interpret it to mean, "It had arrived today,"
which is past perfect and fits your restriction quite well, but
it is not what he was saying. Your inference is incorrect and
you really are not accepting the Present Perfect. You may think
you are, but you have no examples of what you call acceptable
Present Perfect which are not in fact Past Perfect. You are
subconsciously replacing "have" with "had".
> 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.
I would accept the arrival on the day of the time stamp in all
three cases, so long as the focus of the statement is on the
completion of the act and not the process of the act.
*perfective* Dayajta'DI' maQochbe'. The agreement and the
understanding can happen on the same day, or even in the same
minute, but the agreement will not happen until the
understanding is complete, so the focus is not on the process
of the understanding, but on the completion of it. DaHjaj
maQochbe'choHchugh vaj DaHjaj *perfective* Dayajta'.
> -- ghunchu'wI' batlh Suvchugh vaj batlh SovchoH vaj
charghwI'
--
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