tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Sep 29 20:09:06 1996

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

-taH (was: Re: KLBC)

At 07:10 PM 9/10/96 -0700, Mark E. Shoulson wrote:
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>
>>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.


I don't think I ever said it was "tense".  I beleive I said that -taH
implied that it was an on-goin process--that likely the creature was running
then, and is running now.

I did not get this out of the blue.  In the KD, the first setnence under
-taH (page 42) is "This suffix indicates that an action is on-going."  All
of the examples imply this as well... that this action is going on now, and
no foreseeable end is in sight.  I interpreted -taH on the "running dog"
thing to mean that the dog bit the man on the fly, and more or less didn't stop.

If I wanted to point to a group of dogs, and say "the one which is running
is the one that bit the man", I would DEFINITELY use -lI'.  It is running
now.  It may stop in a moment.

The KD also states, in the last paragraph, referring to the the example of
<yIjun> versus <yIjuntaH> that:

        "In the first case, the maneuver is to be executed once only.  In
the second, a series of evasive maneuvers is to be executed--the action is
to be continuous."


I really think that this supports my claim that using -taH implies that the
action doesn't/did not stop.

If you look at the original sentence, it was "The pet which was running bit
him."  The translator used -pu' on "to bite" and -taH on "to run" which, as
I stated, implies to ME, after reading the description in the KD of -taH,
that the pet is ALWAYS running:  it was running then (at the time of the
bite, since we have a perfective in there) and it is running now, and it
probably has not stopped in the meanwhile.

As for your analogy to the headline, I think that you are forgetting that
the main difference between -taH and -lI' is that -lI' has the SAME meaning,
but that the action does and will have an end-point.  In the case of a point
out a dog out of a group of dogs, it's very likely that the dog will stop
running at some point (it's probably running for REASON, even if it *is*
just to play, and when it reaches it's goal, it will stop, and turn around,
or whatever), and the dog is certainly making headway towards this goal.
In your headline exaple in the English, this doesn't even come into play:
you are talking about tense; I am talking about continuity--whether or not
something is going to end.  I think that if said headline were used in
Klingon, -lI' would be used, and not -taH, for this very reason


>~mark


--tQ, who just KNEW someone was going to say something about this one...


---
HoD trI'Qal, tlhIngan wo' Duj lIy So' ra'wI'
Captain T'rkal, Commander IKV Hidden Comet (Klingon speaker and net junkie!)
HaghtaHbogh tlhIngan yIvoqQo'!  toH... qatlh HaghtaH Qanqor HoD???
monlI'bogh tlhInganbe' yIvoqQo'!  SoHvaD monlI' trI'Qal...

Back to archive top level