tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Mar 03 15:59:47 1999

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Re: Placement of aspect suffixes

In a message dated 3/1/1999 12:20:40 PM US Mountain Standard Time,
[email protected] writes:

<< > 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. >>
=============================

I'm going to have to think about several issues in the message above.  So, I
will reply to separate issues in discrete posts to follow.

1)  So:
 
 DaHjaj paq vIje'. wa'leS paqvam vIje'pu'.


Reply:  This looks to me as if you think the "perfective," which both our
dictionaries define as a mark of completion of the action of the verb, applies
to future time.  I would translate your two sentences as "Today I buy a book.
Tomorrow I will have bought the book."

Now, if I understand your method of thinking, I would say this means "When
tomorrow comes I can look back on today and say that I have finished buying
the book."  Is this right?

2) 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.

Reply:  Now I see a conflict to 1).  You and I are on the same track if you
think that the "perfective" shows "completion" earlier of the verb.  

OTOH, I will construct a sentence {wa'leS puq vISuchpu'}.  Obviously I cannot
have already visited the child.  Before you folks kkindly began explaining
Klingon use of Aspect to me, I would have translated this sentence as "I shall
have visited the child tomorrow."

If I put the "perfective" {-pu'} on a sentence containing DaHjaj, I can assume
EITHER that I have already completed the action OR will complete it.  Okay,  I
see that you are stating that "perfective" does not work for a period of time,
only for a point in time.  Is this correct?

Thus, to disambiguate when during DaHjaj the perfection has/will take place, I
need to say something more, relative to the time I am speaking, to indicate a
time during DaHjaj which is past or will is yet to come.  If at 1400 hours I
say, {DaHjaj po puq vISuchpu'}, I would say the English meaning is "I visited
the child this morning."  If I say, {DaHjaj ram po puq vISuchpu'}, I would say
the English meaning is "I shall have visited the child tonight."  If I leave
off the "perfective" {-pu'}, I would say the English meanings are "I visited
the child this morning" and "I shall visit the child tonight."  The difference
in using the perfective in Chinese is whether the action of the verb has been
or will have been completed.

Okay, Klingon is not Chinese.

3)  But here is a sticking point.

 > 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.


Reply:  You all saw this similarity.  It did not come from any MO source other
than the canon we already have?  TKD, TKW, Skybox cards?

Just as you all did, I saw the similarity between the future perfect and a
perfective added to a future time stamp; I saw the similarity between the
present perfect and the perfective added to a present time stamp.  I add that
I see a similarity between a simple past tense and a past time stamp plus the
perfective, especially since MO has used so many examples just this way in his
sample sentences in TKD.  To get other Aspects such as ingression, prior past,
prior present, future present, prior future and post future I need more
information than one time stamp and an Aspect marker.

Later, I will work with you folks on {-choH}.  Obviously, it is not an Aspect
marker in Klingon.  "Inception" is a form of aspect in Slavonic languages,
Kiswahili, Mandarin, and several Austronesian languages, particularly Atayal
and Fijian.  On the other side of the coin, "change of status" is treated as
aspect in Mandarin, not necessarily so in Kiswahili or Atayal.  The
interesting part of all this is that Klingon cannot cover "progressive
perfectives" by combining type 7 suffixes.  Only one is allowed.  But, we will
find some excellent devices by combining {-choH} and {-qa'} and type 7s.

Finally, I have a suggestion.  One of my textbooks in 1981 was "Aspect" by
Bernard Comrie, Cambridge University Press, London, 1976.  Let's read this and
some related materials!

peHruS

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