tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Mar 01 10:59:57 1999

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Re: Placement of aspect suffixes

On Sun, 28 Feb 1999 23:22:56 -0800 (PST) [email protected] 
wrote:

> In a message dated 2/25/1999 12:46:27 PM US Mountain Standard Time,
> [email protected] writes:
> 
> << chay' pIm? mIw yIDel. jIghoj vIneH. >>
> 
> Qu'vam vIchavnISmo' jIQuchqu'.
> 
> In Mandarin when I say that I "finish, complete, bring a task to its
> fulfillment," the time stamp does not render the completion more remote
> because it exists at the same time as the verb suffix meaning "finish."
> Mandarin does not have tense.  I can say:  "jintian wo mai shu" means "Today I
> buy [a] book."  The word order is the same as that in English.  "zuotian wo
> mai shu" means "Yesterday I buy (bought) [a] book."  The verb did not change;
> there was no conjugation, no tense marker, only a time stamp of "yesterday"
> which makes the English translation past tense.  "mingtian wo mai shu" means
> "Tomorrow I [will] buy [a] book."  Again the verb does not show tense; the
> time stamp "tomorrow" is the only indication that the action will take place
> in the future.
> 
> Now:  "jintian wo maiwan shu" means "Today I buy-finish [a] book."  This may
> have already been done earlier today or will still occur later today. 

I think this is a crux point that is not getting enough 
examination yet. The confusion point here is that the time stamp 
"today" is being handled as a duration, not a time stamp. The 
day is long enough to contain the action of the verb (I buy 
book) and the perfective "I have bought book". At one point of 
today, I buy the book. Later today, I have bought the book.

That is exactly what we are all arguing about. If your sentence 
is not talking about the part of the day which is late enough 
that you have completed buying the book, you should not use the 
perfective in Klingon. Marking the verb as perfective is 
bringing focus to the idea that the action of buying the book is 
complete. This is not a necessary marking in Klingon, and if you 
are using a time stamp that includes time before the action was 
complete, it is far less confusing to omit the perfective.

So:

DaHjaj paq vIje'. wa'leS paqvam vIje'pu'.

Or:

povam paq vIje'. povvam paq vIje'pu'.

I would not place the perfective on any verb referring to action 
that was not already complete during the whole duration of the 
time stamp. Otherwise, it sounds like the action is already 
complete before the beginning of the time span marked by the 
time stamp because you are bringing focus to the completion of 
the act. If part of the duration of the time stamp, the action 
was not complete, then you can be easily misunderstood by 
marking it perfective.

Does this help?

> It
> could even mean the "finishing" is occurring right now. 

If the finishing is occurring right now, then the action is 
occuring right now and it is not finished yet. Perfective points 
to a point in time, not a zone in time. It is a vector, not a 
zone. It is an arrow pointing backward in time. The action of 
this verb occurred before the time stamp and it stopped before 
the time stamp. If the arrow can't point unambiguously backward 
from the time stamp, the action is not complete and the 
perfective doesn't belong there.

> "zuotian wo maiwan
> shu" means "Yesterday I buy-finish [a] book."  The is equivalent to simple
> past tense (perfective), not the pluperfect. 

So, in Chinese, there is a redundancy between "Yesterday I buy a 
book" and "Yesterday I buy-finish a book", since they both 
indicate simple past tense. That tells me that this "finish" 
business is not the same thing as perfective. It is talking 
about the process of finishing, not the state of having finished.

You are being misled by a Chinese concept that apparently does 
not map well to the perfective. Aspect is a state, not an 
ongoing process. The perfective is true or not true. It is not 
something which happens over time. It happens at one point in 
time. It is not vague. It is very specific.

> The correct translation is "I
> bought a book yesterday"; it is not "I had bought a book yesterday."  To
> accomplish that we need another clause showing that  a previous action was
> already completed BEFORE this one got its "finishing."  "mingtian wo maiwan
> shu" means "I [will] finish buying [the] book tomorrow."

That sounds like the perfective.
 
> Back to Klingon:  {-pu'} is not quite the same as merely "wan" "finish."  It
> is given in TKD as "perfective."  It works somewhat differently.  In your NC
> meeting with MO, you discovered that the time stamp governs all the time verbs
> occur until another time stamp appears.  Is that not correct?

It sounds more like that you have attached this "finish" concept 
to the perfective and that likely that attachment is the 
problem. The perfective maps much better to the additional 
clause you just described.

I do not believe it is the case that the Klingon {-pu'} 
innacurately maps to the perfective. I believe that the Chinese 
{-wan} innacurately maps to the perfective. I believe this is 
the source of your confusion.

In English, we have the simple past and the past PERFECT. The 
later is an example of the perfective. We also have the 
simple present and the present PERFECT. The latter is an example 
of the perfective. We have the simple future and the future 
PERFECT. The latter is an example of the perfective.

Since Klingon represents "simple tense" by time stamp alone, the 
perfective adds to that time stamp the sense of the action being 
complete. Not that the action came to completion DURING the time 
stamp. The action IS complete BEFORE the time stamp, the same 
way that the past perfect implies the action was already 
complete when the simple past happened, and the present perfect 
implies that the action was complete before the present, and the 
future perfect implies that the action will be complete before 
the simple future happens.

Is this making sense yet?
 
> Now it is your turn.  Please explain more clearly what MO has caused you to
> know about how {-pu'} works when coupled with time stamps.  I had never heard
> nor read anything about this.  You, ghunchu'wI', perhaps SuStel and Holtej
> already knew.  How did you disseminate this information you got in your NC
> interview?  Why did I not read messages to this effect on our KLI listserv?

The rest of us saw a similarity between the past perfect and the 
perfective added to a past time stamp. We saw a similarity 
between the future perfect and the perfective added to a future 
time stamp. We saw a similarity between the present perfect and 
the perfective added to a present time stamp.

We did not have "-wan" to mislead us. Until this explanation, 
we've all been mystified as to where you are coming from with 
your use of the perfective. I thank you for this explanation. I 
hope that it becomes useful for us to meet at a common 
understanding of the perfective.
 
> peHruS

charghwI' 'utlh

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