tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Nov 22 17:33:56 2009
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Re: Klingon Sentence Structure
Christopher Doty wrote:
> Just because English doesn't morphologically mark aspect as a
> separate, specific category doesn't mean that English verbs don't have
> aspect. There is no sense in which "visited" in English is anything
> but a perfective: "visited" cannot be used if one is still visiting,
> if one visits on a regular basis, etc. It means the activity is over
> and done with.
The ambassador visited Vulcan frequently.
pIj vulqan Such Duy'a'.
The ambassador visited the Enterprise (and then left).
'entepray' Suchpu' Duy'a'.
Whether to use an aspect suffix depends entirely on the context of the
sentence. Any verb without some kind of aspect suffix is explicitly not
continuous and not complete.
If I just said, "The ambassador visited Vulcan," this English sentence
does not make clear whether this was a one-time trip or if the
ambassador goes to Vulcan regularly. Thus, in translating the sentence
into Klingon, you need to know the correct aspect intended.
--
SuStel
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