Re: Placement of aspect suffixes

["William H. Martin" <whm2m@server1.mail.virginia.edu>]

On Wed, 24 Feb 1999 01:16:19 -0800 (PST) WestphalWz@aol.com 
wrote:

> In a message dated 2/23/1999 10:34:30 PM US Mountain Standard Time,
> aranders@netusa1.net writes:
> 
> << And you're quite right, there are no explicit references to Klingon past
>  tense, perfective or otherwise...for the simple reason that there is no
>  Klingon past tense to refer to.
>   >>
> 
> Actually, TKD p41, section 4.2.7 does say explicitly that {-pu'} is
> "perfective."  p167 says "perfective" again.
> 
> It seems that I am missing some discussion on (not verbatim) "a time stamp
> stays in place until another time stamp is introduced." 

I've personally discussed this with Okrand years ago at 
Stellarcon 16 in NC and at one or another of the qep'a'. I don't 
mean that to be a name-dropping thing. I have been fortunate 
enough to have a couple relatively brief and casual 
conversations with him after presentations he has made.

It's not all that much of a big thing. I have not had the chance 
to discuss much with him and I have no special "in" with the 
man. It just so happens that tense and perfective is an area 
we've discussed and he did talk about a time stamp acting as 
"context" for much larger units of communication than a mere 
sentence.

ASL works much the same way. You establish a time stamp and 
further comments are assumed to refer to that time setting until 
you give some new time setting information. I thought this was a 
very common feature of languages which lack tense. I know you 
speak at least one language without tense other than Klingon, so 
I would expect this to be a familiar concept.

> Also, I had not heard
> that using the "perfective" in a statement that was already inferred to be
> occurring in the past changed the whole sentence into a "past perfect" or
> "pluperfect."  What issues of HolQeD or what forum revealed these ideas to
> you?

If we know that the tense is past and we use the perfective, 
that means the verb is past perfect. If we know the tense is 
present and we use the perfective, that means that the verb is 
present perfect. If we use the perfective and we know the tense 
is future, then that verb is future perfect.

Trust me on this.
 
> peHruS

charghwI'