tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun May 25 17:42:22 2003

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Re: JangmeH toch De'wI' lo'



ja'pu' SuStel:
>If I say that /yaS qIp puq/ means
>
>The child hit the officer.
>The child hits the officer.
>The child will hit the officer.
>
>I'm not saying that it means one of these.  It means all of them at once.
>It means that at some unspecified point in time, past, present, or future,
>we don't know which, a child hits an officer.  I'm unable to translate the
>sentence accurately into English, because English MUST have tense.

ja' Sangqar:
>I agree.  Deliberate ambiguity for stylistic reasons is not the only reason
>a time context may not be explicitly stated.

The way you're agreeing seems to show that you still don't understand what
SuStel was saying.  A time context might not even *exist* for a Klingon
sentence, either explicitly or implicitly.

-- ghunchu'wI'


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