[Tlhingan-hol] mutually subordinate clauses?

[ghunchu'wI' 'utlh]

On Tue, Jun 5, 2012 at 11:49 AM, David Trimboli <david at trimboli.name> wrote:
> As far as I can tell your argument boils down to "because we've
> always done it this way."

It's not so much that "we've always done it." In fact, the [mis]use of
{-pu'} as an indicator of simple past tense is one of the more
endearing features of the early tlhIngan-Hol mailing list posts. On
the contrary, I'm arguing that this is how Klingon IS done, supported
largely by a large body of recent text.

I would distill my position on this topic into two points.
1) TKD absolutely does not say aspect suffixes are required when the
meaning does not exclude perfective or continuous aspect.
2) Canon text often does not use aspect suffixes when there is an
apparent aspect meaning but expressing it is inconsequential.

That's basically it.


The related but distinct idea regarding what Klingon perfective really
means isn't that important, as long as it doesn't keep us from
understanding each other. In the interest of mutual understanding,
I'll let you know where I'm coming from. Not having read the Pinker
text that is apparently informing your argument, I don't have a clear
idea of what your references to an event's "temporal shape" and
"internal structure" mean. However, when I'm thinking in Klingon, I
comprehend a verb expressing aspect as more of a quality or a state
than an event. In my understanding, perfective indicates a finished
state, focusing not on the actual completion of the action but on the
fact that it is indeed finished. Continuous indicates a quality of
ongoing action. Neither explicitly places the action on a timeline,
though I can't quite imagine how an action can be finished without it
having happened prior to the time when it is finished, nor can I
imagine referring to an ongoing action without strongly implying that
it is actually happening at the time being referred to.

I'll close my end of this discussion with an observation on the
problem of trying to apply too much extra-TKD context. We *know* that
Okrand did not always use grammatical jargon precisely. The nominal
Klingon "topic" marker suffix {-'e'} doesn't mean only what "topic"
means in grammar texts, often indicating "focus" instead. The Klingon
"relative clause" marker suffix {-bogh} doesn't mean everything that
"relative clause" means in general. I do not believe that the Klingon
suffix category labeled as "aspect" necessarily matches exactly what
"aspect" means in non-Klingon grammar.

-- ghunchu'wI'