tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue May 30 16:18:04 2006
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Re: Brainfart question (so dumb it should be KLBC)
- From: "d'Armond Speers, Ph.D." <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Brainfart question (so dumb it should be KLBC)
- Date: Tue, 30 May 2006 19:17:49 -0400
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>
> I always considered -taH to enforce present dence and -ta'/-pu' inforce
> past tense, but never really considered anything to imply future tence.
> "qaneHtaH" as "i used to want you" dosn't really make sence to me... All the
> other examples i can see a stretch to, but that... o.O Question is, what
> does it imply if there is no context, and it's stand alone... If the only
> klingon phrase was "i want you" would it be still appropriate to use "qaneH"
> without a suffix? That's my question, because the suffixes do imply tenses,
> but lack of tense... is some what vague and isn't always enforced. lol
>
ghunchu'wI' wrote a really nice, clear description of this a while back,
which I stol^H^H^H^H appropriated for the FAQ. You can read his comments
here:
http://www.speers.nu/Holtej/klingon/faq.htm#3.1
It's good, read it.
In a nutshell, {-taH}, {-ta'} and {-pu'} indicate aspect (the state of
completion), not tense. So {qaneH} could mean "I want you," "I wanted you,"
"I will want you," and all other ways of writing variations of tense in
English (am going to, used to, have wanted, and so on). If you want more
clarity about tense (when an event described by the verb occurred), then you
can use clarifying language ("yesterday I wanted you, but not today," and so
on).
--Holtej