tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Mar 10 22:09:13 1999

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Re: Placement of aspect suffixes



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



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