tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Mar 14 09:35:15 1999
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Re: Aspect
ja' peHruS:
>DaH maQochbe'. *Aspect buvDaq mu'mey {-choH} {-qa} je tu'lu'be'. napbe'.
nuqjatlh? napbe' nuq? napchu' qechvam jay'!
>'ach *verbs internal temporal structure* 'oS *Aspect. Is the period of time
>complete or not?
Huh?
Where do you see anything about a "period of time" in TKD's description
of aspect? Aspect suffixes are a yes/no comment on the completion or
continuity of an *action*.
>As for the way TKD expresses Aspect, I agree fully that
>there are only four Aspect suffixes: perfective, perfective with a known
>goal, continuous, and continuous with a known or implied limit (goal).
I'm glad you can count, but I'm really not sure why you feel the need to
"agree fully" with something that's not the slightest bit controversial.
>Even though in Terran languages changes in states of events are usually
>considered Aspect, too, we have all repeatedly learned that Klingon is NOT
>like any Terran language(s).
Your understanding of aspect obviously differs markedly from that of many
other people, including those who wrote the dictionary definitions you've
presented on occasion. Some of the terms intrigued me, and in order to
try to see where you're getting your unusual interpretation of what the
word "aspect" means, I've been reading up on the subject. Nowhere have I
found any reference to aspect being connected with an *event*. Even the
"inchoative" aspect, which would appear at first glance to have something
in common with the Klingon verb suffix {-choH}, is defined as referring
to the *state* of having recently begun, not the change in state itself.
Perhaps one of the ways Klingon differs from other languages is that it
does a better job of keeping tense and aspect from getting tangled up in
each other. Or maybe it's *not* so different in this area after all, as
some of the Skybox cards seem to have some troubling muddiness with the
usage of {-pu'} along with {-taHvIS}. I have exactly the same problems
interpreting Skybox S8 as I do with many of your sentences:
...nuja' tlhingan wIch ja'wI'pu' yIntaHvIs qeylIS'e'
lIjlaHbe'bogh vay' batlh 'etlhvam chenmoHlu'pu'.
...According to Klingon legend, this sword of honor
descends from the time of Kahless the Unforgettable.
This seems to say that the sword had already been made while Kahless was
alive. It *can* be interpreted without requiring the completion to have
taken place before Kahless' birth, but it's an extra cognitive step for
me to interpret it that way. Perhaps the {-pu'} suffix on the main verb
is intended to apply to the entire sentence, subordinate clause and all.
That's stretching things uncomfortably far, in my opinion, though it is
probably not so far stretched as to actually *break* the grammar. As a
matter of style and clarity, I definitely think it's inferior to the same
sentence without the {-pu'}.
-- ghunchu'wI'