tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jan 12 02:28:15 1996

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Re: cha'logh jImeQ

although I'm not sure how far one can go in comparing
terran (natural) languages with extraterrestrians (constructed)
languages, I think I agree more with Guidos view about -taH 
than with charghwI's. Follows my own point of view...

aspect got its name from 'spectare' meaning that it
conveys how the speaker 'sees' the action. that is, use of
one or the other type seven suffix does not necesserily
indicate that the actions themselves are different, but that
the speakers wish to emphasize different parts of it.

Klingon enables us to express several qualities with
its aspect markers: they affect wether one sees the
perfective or continuous aspect and wether one sees
the result or goal of the action. we have the following table:

		final
perf.  cont.    -   +
  +      -    -pu' -ta'
  -      -     0    /
  -      +    -taH -lI'

> 
> be'nallI' DaqIptaH'a'?
> 
Are you beating your wife?

the ambiguity lies in wether I mean "now, in this moment"
or "usually, repeatedly" which is quite naturally "continuous"
(at least to me - but that may be a terran influence)

> Just like the English equivalent, "Do you still beat your
> wife?" a yes or no answer will not suffice to convey that you
> have never done so. The emphasis is on the continuity of the
> action and not on the simple existence of the action. If you
> said, {be'nallI' DaqIplI''a'?} a "no" answer would be enough to
> express that you are not in the act of beating your wife.
> 
-lI' implies that you have a certain goal in mind or that you
have a limited amount of "Hits" to deal out. (this works fine
in a legal context where a crime is to be punished by a fixed
amount of beats to the hands/feet/back whatever)

> 
> I see the difference between "It is raining," and "It is STILL
> raining," as the difference between {SISlI'} or even {SIS} and
> {SIStaH}. With either {SISlI'} or {SIS} you know that it is
> currently raining and that it is going to stop. With {SIStaH}
> the emphasis is more on the continuity of the raining than on
> the act itself. As questions, this is even more obvious:
> 
with SIS you express simply the FACT that it is raining.
with SIStaH you stress the course of the event   
SISlI' I'd use when I colud see that the clouds start to clear up

and with respect to "reading the list", I think the problem
here may lie in the different meaning of to read here and in
e.g. "reading a message". reading a message definitely has a
known stopping point/goal, so -lI' is applicable, but unless
you state you are going to "read the list" only for a limited
amount of time, say a month, I don't think you could use -lI'
with this meaning of "read"

(I want to point out explicitly that of course -taH can be used
with either - again not changing what actually happens but how you
see it. Another example comes to my mind: when I'm sitting at a
terminal and a colleague comes by asking "what are you doing", I 
usually would use the 0 suffix, if I want to stress that I'm
continuously doing it (e.g. "still" :) I might want to use -taH,
if he asks because he wants to know if I have the time to join him
(to do something together) and I want to say "yeah, I'll soon be
finished with this" I might want to use -lI'.... I'm not sure
if this example was any help in making my point...)

				HomDoq

--
----------------------------------------------------
Marc Ruehlaender	[email protected]
Universitaet des Saarlandes, Saarbruecken, Germany
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