Please inform requestors of this type of information that aspect suffixes may apply to sentences with time stamps which indicate future or present verb action, also. Perhaps you could explain what this means, e.g. completion of action in the future.
- From: Daniel Morse <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: KLBC Another simple one.
- Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1999 17:16:26 -0600
- References: <CBD6795F70A5D211B2B20008C733321AE0B843@INFINITI2>
peHruS
Andeen, Eric wrote:
jatlh Banks bu':> You have angered me.
> jIH tuQeH...something. Past tense. How is past tense
> expressed? I know I've seen it before, but I can't seem
> to find it now. Was I even close?The reason you can't find it is that Klingon does not have tense. <jISop>
can mean "I ate", "I eat", or "I will eat". The context of the sentence
tells the reader when the action happened.Klingon does, however, have something called "aspect", which is what the
type seven suffixes are for. Aspect describes the progress of the action:
<-taH> means the action is ongoing or continuous; <-lI'> means the action is
progressing toward a known stopping point, and <-pu'> and <-ta'> mean the
action is complete, with <-ta'> adding the idea that the action was
intentionally undertaken, and the completion of the action is an
accomplished goal.In practice, English past tense often gets translated with <-pu'> or <-ta'>,
and vice versa, but they are not the same thing. The more accurate English
construction is one of the perfect tenses. For example: jISoppu' - "I had
eaten", "I have eaten", "I will have eaten". I think that <-pu'> is probably
exactly what you want here.Also, the verb <QeH> means "be angry". "You be angry me" doesn't make much
sense. There's no simple Klingon verb meaning "anger", but fortunately the
<-moH> suffix is just what you need: it turns "be angry" into "cause to be
angry", or "anger".jIH tuQeHmoHpu'.
pagh
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