tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jan 29 13:49:41 1996
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Re: KLBC: Re: *romangan*Daq mu'thleghmey val
>Date: Mon, 29 Jan 1996 10:04:57 -0800
>From: [email protected] (Bill Willmerdinger)
> uu> the English simple present tense," (TKD 4.2.7, p. 40) but that "when
> uu> context is appropriate, verbs without a Type 7 suffix may be translated
> uu> by the English future tense." (TKD 4.2.7, 0. 40) Nowhere does he state
> uu> that it is appropriate to translate verbs with no Type 7 suffix as past
> uu> tense.
>I have to disagree.
>"Klingon does not express tenses... These ideas come across from context or
>other words in the sentence (such as {wa'leS} "tomorrow")... The absence of a
>Type 7 suffix usually means that the action is not completed and is not
>continuous...."
>Those other words are, of course, a time element, such as {wa'leS} or {wa'Hu'}
>or {wa'SaD Hutvatlh HutmaH jav ben}.
So far, I'm with you.
>{wa'Hu' lunej} and {wa'Hu' lunejpu'} mean two different things to me. {wa'Hu'
>lunejpu'} means "Yesterday they searched" and indicates that the serching is
>completed. {wa'Hu' lunej} also means "Yesteday they searched" but says
>nothing
>about the completion of the search, simply that they were engaged in searching
>yesterday (and perhaps are searching again today).
I split off from you here.
Your interpretation *still* uses "-pu'" as tense-bound: it must refer to
things with respect to the present. I don't know that I have canon that
you're wrong offhand, but it doesn't sound right to me.
To me, "-pu'" is aspect, which is sort of like second-order tense. It's
degree of completion (or if you like, a tense) *with respect to* the
existing tense. So in English we say "he went" for past tense, and "he had
gone" for past-in-the-past (I'm talking about the past, and the going
happened even before THAT). Or "I will have gone," for past-in-the-future:
I'm talking about the future, and by that time the going will be past,
though it may or may not be past now.
So "wa'Hu' lunej" means "Yesterday they searched." That is, sometime
yesterday there was some searching going on. That searching may or may not
be still going on (I'm agreeing with you there), but it was happening
yesterday, and that's what I'm talking about. "wa'Hu' lunejpu'" means
"Yesterday they had searched." That is, as of [some time] yesterday, the
search was completed and they no longer were searching. It was past-tense
already yesterday.
Work for you?
~mark