tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Aug 24 22:59:11 1999
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Re: Aspect (was RE: KLBC-Fr.)
- From: [email protected]
- Subject: Re: Aspect (was RE: KLBC-Fr.)
- Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 01:58:12 EDT
In a message dated 8/9/1999 10:27:56 PM US Mountain Standard Time,
[email protected] writes:
<<
1) "perfective" aspect refers to a completed action.
2) "continuous" aspect refers to an ongoing action.
The idea of intentional action or a known or implied end to a process
influences the choice of suffix, but the aspect idea is almost trivial.
>So, when
>people tell me that Klingon's {wej} establishes a perfective, I have a lot
of
>re-learning to do to catch up with those people.
You seem to have completely misread that note also. Holtej said that
*{-ta'}* carries the completion idea (i.e., perfective). Using {wej} is
unrelated to the aspect. It merely indicates that the expected action
is complete at some unspecified time in the future. Again, {wej} is an
adverbial that defines a time context, one that is superficially similar
to the English future tense. >>
===================
An action that is not completed is imperfective, no?????? It need not be
continuous to be imperfective, only not perfected.
This is the trouble. HovqIj (with pagh's support) are arguing the other way
around. They are saying that there was an excellent use of perfective
following the adverbial {wej} because an anticipated completion was "not yet"
completed but would be (sometime in the future). They were saying that {wej}
made the perfective aspect of the verb "negative," rather than taking the
opposing aspect, i.e., imperfective.
I am not saying that perfectivity cannot be realized in the future. It can.
I am saying that I "feel very strongly" that {not yet} is CONTINUNG through
the time we are looking at the situation. The state of a sentence that is
not yet complete is "still" imperfect, therefore imperfective.
buy' ngop. DuSaQ'a' HolQeD vIghojqa'. DaHjaj taghpu'.
peHruS