tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Sep 23 16:13:39 1997

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Re: Return to school

>>> I suggest for "I went back to school yesterday" {wa'Hu' DuSaQDaq
>>> jIghojqa'}.
>>> This translates literally as "I started studying again at school
>>> yesterday."

>> Although this may be covered with the use of {wa'Hu'}, I would still
>> use a suffix like {-pu'} or {-ta} on {jIghojqa'} to indicate that the
>> action was completed.
>>
>> jIghojqa'ta'

> I don't agree.
> First: the action is not completed, you are still learning. If chegh
> (return) was used, then -ta' might work. <jIghojqa'> is <I resume
> learning> or <I am learning again>. <jIghojqa'ta'> - <I have learned
> again>.

And here's my two cents:

Ignoring for the moment the error of using <ghoj> instead of <HaD> in
some of these examples (as was pointed out elsewhere), consider the
subtlties of difference that aspect allows.  

<wa'Hu' jIghojqa'> to me simply means "Yesterday I resumed learning." It
doesn't say how long I kept at the process, only that I started up again
(and by entailment that I had done it at least once before).

<wa'Hu' jIghojqa'ta'> I might translate as "Yesterday I finally resumed
learning." stressing that this was something I'd been intended to resume
doing, and by golly, yesterday I finally managed it. As opposed to:

<wa'Hu' jIghojta'> which I'd read as "Yesterday I learned." suggesting
again that this is something I had entered into deliberately. Note there
is no conotation that I had ever learned before and was resuming the
process, but neither is this interpretation excluded; it's simply not
important to the meaning I'm trying to get across.  If you the listener
wanted to know you could ask <bIghojqa'a'> and I could respond in the
affirmative with  <HIja'> and either of the previous two statements.

In all of these cases, the apparent tense of the verb in English is
provided not by the verbal suffixes, but by the use of <wa'Hu'> and
nothing else.

And that's my two cents.

Lawrence


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