tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Mar 10 22:09:13 1999
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Re: Placement of aspect suffixes
- From: [email protected]
- Subject: Re: Placement of aspect suffixes
- Date: Thu, 11 Mar 1999 01:06:13 EST
In a message dated 3/4/1999 9:58:48 AM US Mountain Standard Time,
[email protected] writes:
<< 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.
====================================
jIQochbe'chu'. poH naQ per "perfective."
Verbatim quote from "A Dictionary of Grammatical Terms in Linguistics" by R.L.
Trask: "aspect: A grammatical category which relates to the internal
temporat structure of a situation."
====================================
> 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'}. >>
=========================
Verbatim quote from "A Dictionary of Grammatical Terms in Linguistics" by R.L.
Trask: "perfective: A superordinate aspectual category involving a lack of
explicit reference to the internal temporal consistency of a situation, and
contrasting principally with the imperfective. In English, perfective aspect
is chiefly expressed by the simple past-tense form."
We have noted that TKD consistently translates perfective sentences into
English with "have been...."
I have re-read MO's canon constructions in TKD, TKW and KGT. In all cases no
explicit time stamp was used. I hope someone can point out to me any canon
sentence with both a time stamp and a type 7 aspect verb suffix. I want to
see how MO translates such sentences, if any exist.
Although I could easily agree that doubling the past-time reference by having
both a time stamp and the perfective type 7 if shown to me by canon, I'm not
now sure that is true. I would have trouble conceptualizing that a time
reference to the future must point backwards in time. Right now it is easier
for me to conceptualize that the perfective refers to the time period, not a
part of it. That, after all, falls under the definition of "imperfective."
peHruS