tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon May 19 22:08:03 2003
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RE: JangmeH toch De'wI' lo'
So, am I just completely wrong on this...lol. I always believed that these type seven suffixes were "tense-makers." My mother and father started speaking Klingon to me when I was about twelve, and every time they used these suffixes (when I could pick them out as they spoke) I thought they indicated when something happened. So, something like, "jISup" can be translated as, "I jump," "I jumped," and "I will jump"??? What else can be translated from that simple sentence? And what else do I need to know about the type seven suffixes...help me here, I'm drowning :)
"Sangqar (Sean Healy)" <[email protected]> wrote: >On my way out to class, but when I get back I'll defend my reasoning more:
>Just on a quick note, though...I haven't seen any sentence, written by
>Okrand or otherwise, that are not translated in present/future tense when
>lacking -pu', -taH', or -ta'. In order to completely translate things into
>English, we use tenses, but we must call it "aspect" just because in
>Klingon they don't know what tense is. Why then identify so many
>translations with the use of "past/present/future tense" if they're not
>really tenses? Now, we can keep this discussion civil or start getting
>arrogant with each other. I've taken my full classes with the KLI and am
>an English major (the best source for understanding English is by studying
>foreign languages), so I can go both ways. But I have never seen a
>sentence that wasn't translated into present tense that carried with it the
>-taH suffix. And the same is true for the other type 7 suffixes. "I will
>have seen him"? I'm sorry, but is that a switch in tense? That happens to
>be improper and absurd. Klingons are blunt, to the point, and quick. They
>don't have time to add the "fill-in" words like DaH, DaHjaj, or other crap.
> Walking around and a Klingon says something with -pu' attached to it, I
>know that it is in past tense. It would be real hard for them to get by
>otherwise.
I'll jump in here. Do you recognize a difference between the following
pairs of sentences?
I see him
I have seen him
I saw him
I had seen him
The tense of the conjugated verb in both sentences is the same, and yet the
meaning is different. This is because of the aspect. In English, the idea
of aspect is conveyed by auxiliary verbs. In Klingon, it's done with
suffixes.
Hopefully this convinces you that tense and aspect are different things.
Now let's move on to the possibility of a language not having tenses.
There are other languages where tense is expressed by time indicators,
rather than by the grammar. The only one I've studied is ASL, but I
understand that some langauges of Amazonian tribes and some Polynesian
languages also operate this way.
The Romance languages have an imperfect tense and another past tense (which
grammatical form is used for the other past tense is not the same in all
Romance languages). The imperfect expresses a ongoing action in the past,
whereas the other expresses a one-time action (this is the simplified
explanantion generally given to first-year students). Both, however, are
generally expressed by the English past tense. Here is an example in
Portuguese:
Eu estava no banho quando alguem ligou
I was in the tub when someone called
Being in the tub is an ongoing action, while someone calling is a one-time
action, so the Portuguese has different tenses. But notice that 'was' and
'called' are in the same tense in English. If one language can get by with
fewer tenses than another and make up the difference by context or
non-grammatical indicators, than why can't a language get by with no tenses
and make up the difference the same way?
As for a sentence with {taH} that's not translated into the present tense,
here's an example from TKD:
SutlhtaHvIS chaH DIHIvpu'
While they were negotiating we attacked them
Notice that {SutlhtaHvIS} is translated "while we WERE negotiating", clearly
a non-present tense.
-Sangqar
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taHjaj wo'
Qapla'
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