tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Mar 04 08:43:50 1999

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Re: Placement of aspect suffixes



On Wed, 3 Mar 1999 16:24:38 -0800 (PST) [email protected] wrote:
...
> 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."

Yes. The perfective can apply to future time. Yes. That is a 
good translation, though I'd translate {paqvam} as "this book", 
indicating that it is the SAME book. Your use of "a" and "the" 
work fine towards this same end, however, so it really is a fine 
translation.

> 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?

Exactly.
 
> 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.  

I don't see a conflict with 1. If some part of today, I buy a 
book, then tomorrow, the act of buying the book will be 
complete. The point of confusion I'm trying to divorce you from 
is {-wan} seems to imply an act which has a duration. If I buy a 
book, while I buy it I am finishing buying it. The perfective, 
as Klingon uses it, is not a process. It is a state, and it is 
applied to the action relating it to the time stamp.

If you use a whole day as a time stamp and the "finishing" 
occurs during that day, then the perfective is not appropriate 
because the perfective implies an arrow pointing to a previous 
time when the completion occurred. If the finishing happens 
today and the whole day is your time stamp, then you can't point 
backwards from today to the moment when the action was complete. 
So, today I buy-finish the book, but it is not that for all of 
today I have bought the book. Part of today, I had not bought 
the book yet.

Is this any clearer?
 
> 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."

That's a good translation.
 
> 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. 

No. You have to assume that you have already completed it. It is 
not enough that the completion occurs during your time stamp. 
You have to be able to point backwards from the time stamp to 
the completion in order for the perfective to apply.

> 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?

You can use a period of time, but the perfective has to apply to 
the entire time period. It can't just apply to part of the time 
period.
 
> 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." 

No. That's simple past. You established the simple past with 
{DaHjaj po}. That is your time setting. Then you add {-pu'}, 
resulting in the statement that at that time setting, this 
morning, which is in the past, I HAD visited the child. There 
can be no part of this morning that happens before the visit is 
complete if you want to use {-pu'}.

You established simple past with {DaHjaj po}. You converted it 
into past perfect (pluperfect) with {-pu'}.

> If I say, {DaHjaj ram po puq vISuchpu'}, I would say
> the English meaning is "I shall have visited the child tonight." 

I'm assuming the {po} is an editing error and will ignore it.

Yes. This is a good translation. You establish future tense with 
{DAHjaj ram} and then make it future perfect with {-pu'}.

> 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." 

Exactly.

> 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.

Agreed.
 
> 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?

While this is true, I did have an opportunity to confirm that my 
understanding was accurate in a brief personal conversation with 
Okrand lots of years ago, and everything he has said or written 
that I've witnessed since then is consistent with this 
understanding. The only exceptions are some examples in TKD 
where it is translated as simple past, which Okrand has 
explained with a dangling comment I can only paraphrase, "Of 
course when I first developed the language, {-pu'} was past 
tense, but I later changed it because I thought it would be more 
interesting to have aspect and not tense." Having heard that, 
the TKD examples made more sense. They can be explained away as 
a loose translation of English present perfect. All such 
examples lack real time stamps, so he can get away with that.
 
> 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.

Many languages get along fine without these.
 
> 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. 

That is what I suspect {-wan} fits better than as the kind of 
perfective used in Klingon. But consider {-lI'}. It implies that 
completion is happening, but has not happened yet. There is 
continuous progression towards completion of a foreseeable goal.

> But, we will
> find some excellent devices by combining {-choH} and {-qa'} and type 7s.

Yes.
 
> 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!

Unfortunately, I have neither the book, nor the time. I'm 
building a guitar, preparing for a trip to France, and learning 
to play new music on a new guitar and a banjo, plus dating a 
woman who lives over 60 miles away.
 
> peHruS

charghwI' 'utlh



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