tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Sep 10 19:04:30 1996
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Re: KLBC
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>Date: Tue, 10 Sep 1996 00:50:45 -0700
>From: [email protected] (HoD trI'Qal)
>At 07:30 PM 9/2/96 -0700, Laurel Beckley wrote:
>>choppu' qettaHbogh Saj.
>>The pet which is running bit him.
>I really don't want to get into a detailed discussion of -taH right now, but
>I would like to point out that using -taH in there implies that the pet is
>running now, and was also running when it bit the officer--it implies a
>"continuous" running, ceaseless running.
Well, not so much "ceaseless" but that its stopping isn't happening or
relevant to this discussion. I'm not sure that the -taH implies that the
pet was running when it bit the person AND that it's running now. It is
merely distinguishing the pet as being one who was, at some meaningful
point in time under consideration, involved in running. If there are six
pets lounging around the room, and you ask which one bit your brother, I
might say "the running pet bit him," as opposed to the other five which are
eating or sleeping. Or contrariwise, he might have been in motion when he
wsas bitten, and the pet was running at the time, and thus is distinguished
as a "running" pet, even though it isn't at the moment.
There is nothing special about the present time in Klingon; that's what
having no tense means. It means that anything said is said to happen at
SOME point in time, but whether that's past or present or future isn't
relevant. All that matters is it's happening at a point in time that is
worth mentioning for whatever reason. Here, we have two verbs (biting and
running). Let's drop the -pu' and think of both as unmarked. They are
both said to happen at SOME time, but not necessarily now and not
necessarily the same time. Consider headline-speak: "running pet bites
man." True, by normal reading we'd assume that this means the pet was
running when it bit the man (though it may not be now), but if this were
printed above a picture of six pets of which one is seen to be running,
that could easily be identification of the pet, not a statement of what it
was doing when it bit the man, only when the picture was taken.
>And yes, this is correct. {{:)
This is true.
~mark
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