tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Dec 17 08:41:17 1996
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Re: Dr Okrand Speaks -- ben
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>Date: Mon, 16 Dec 1996 10:22:06 -0800
>From: [email protected] (Alan Anderson)
>
>ja' Okrand quv:
>> The word ben can be used to mean "years old," but in
>> Klingon, one doesn't say "I am x years old."
>
>maj. lI'qu' De'vam.
>
>> "I am 40 years old" would be expressed as:
>> loSmaH ben jIboghpu'
>
>{-pu'}?! I'd like to know why the perfective is appropriate here.
>There are a couple of weaselish arguments I could come up with, but
>this seems to me like a misapplication of perfective.
I was thinking about this, and here's a possible answer:
There's more than one way to set time-context. The timestamp here
indicates a sort of "internal" time-context, but the sentence is still set
in the "present." "As of today, I have been born 40 years past."
Something like that.
I've also recently heard from Marc Okrand that he would not consider it
wrong to drop the "-pu'" either: it's just a different shade of usage. He
wavered between them himself.
~mark
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