[Tlhingan-hol] Time and Type 7 verb suffixes

[lojmIt tI'wI'nuv]

My response to SuStel apparently bombed because it got too long. I will work to be concise, and start over.

Instead of just trying to have a "I'm right and you are wrong" contest, I'm going to describe my understanding of how Klingon deals with the absence of tense, and how the Type 7 verb suffix fits into this, and clarify the difference I believe exists between Sustel and myself in the interpretation of page 40 in KTD. I promise to try REALLY HARD to not create a straw man argument, in any way misinterpreting what SuStel is trying to say in order to belittle his argument. I may fail, but this is an honest effort. I wanted to respond in line, but the message failed to get through because his text and mind combined is too long for this list.

In English, we have a time line with a single point "the present" that is the boundary between the "past" and "future". The present is the end of the past and the beginning of the future, though it is contained within neither. It is the boundary.

A lot of English grammar is based upon this time structure. If I say in English, "Yesterday, I go to the store," then I just made a grammatical error because we are required to express tense as part of the verb form, and the time stamp "Yesterday" is a deictic reference planted firmly in the past tense.

Klingon doesn't have a single, absolute structure for how a verb's action fits on a time line. There is no tense. "Now" and "yesterday" are both equally valid time references with an important difference. "Now" is brief. "Yesterday is 24 hours long. In Klingon, it refers to the time beginning at sunrise yesterday and ending at sunrise today.

Tense doesn't give you a shape on the time line. You just know that a past tense verb touched the time line some time before now. A present tense verb is touching the time line now. A future tense verb touches the time line after now.

There's a confusing similarity between the past tense and the present perfect. The present perfect informs you that action was completed before the present. Past tense informs you that the action occurred before now.

I ate dinner. (Past)

I have eaten dinner. (Present perfect)

The difference between these two is more important in Klingon than in English, which confuses people.

Instead of tense, Klingon uses "time stamps". It is very similar to the way Klingon deals with location. The locative, like the time stamp, comes at the beginning of a sentence, if it is included at all. Both are optional.

While in English, we are required to get the tense right in every verb in every sentence, in Klingon, a time stamp or a locative in one sentence can become the context that is assumed as unchanged while we speak or write entire conversations or novel length books. In general, a time stamp or a locative helps the listener/reader establish the context of things being said, and since in many areas of grammar Klingon abhors redundancy, once the time or location is established, unless it changes, it becomes part of the "context" and tends not to be repeated.

Hence, Okrand's explanation in TKD that it's like you say, "Today, I go to the store." "Yesterday, I go to the store." "Tomorrow, I go to the store." There is no change in verb form relating to the concept of tense.

The thing that's not obvious to people who haven't worked with the language much is that in Klingon, a time stamp implies a duration as well as a reserved spot on the time line, much the way that a locative implies an area that has both a location and a size. That's where the gotcha comes in when dealing with a Type 7 verb suffix.

If I say {DaH 'uQ vISoppu'}, then I've said "Now, I have eaten dinner." This is equal the the English sentence, "I have eaten dinner."

But if I say, {wa'Hu' 'uQ vISoppu'}, then it's not quite accurate to translate that as "I had eaten dinner yesterday." It's actually hard to accurately translate it because there is no exact equivalent in English without further context. What it really means is, "Either before yesterday started, or at some point during the full span of yesterday, from sunrise to sunrise, I finished eating dinner."

I'm not saying anything about when I started dinner. I'm not saying anything about how long I ate dinner. I'm just saying that on a time line, the end point of the action of my eating dinner occurred during or before the Klingon version of yesterday.

Notice that I could describe the exact same event with the words {wa'Hu' 'uQ vISop.}

The real difference between these two is that in the first version, I'm placing the end of the event of my eating dinner during or before yesterday, while in the second version, I'm expressing that the action of my eating occurred during the span of yesterday. If the beginning, middle and end of my eating dinner all happened during yesterday, both statements are accurate. Using {-pu'} simply emphasizes that the completion of the action occurred during or before the time span of the time stamp.

Replace {wa'Hu'} with {wa'leS} and you've simply moved the time stamp. Everything else about both statements remains the same.

Time references are part of context for the action of the verb, either established at the beginning of a sentence, or at some earlier point in the conversation, or assumed to be mutually understood because of... context.

Type 7 suffixes don't tell you when something happened. They combine with the time stamp to describe the shape of the action along the time line. {-taH} has no beginning or end within the scope of the time stamp. {-pu'} and {-ta'} both have an ending that occurs before or during the scope of the time stamp. {-lI'} has an ending that occurs during or after the scope of the time stamp.

The difference of opinion that started the argument with SuStel is that I believe that a Type 7 suffix is, like a locative or a time stamp, or a plural suffix on a noun, optional. It's presence can enhance the context of the action of the verb, but its absence implies nothing reliable in terms of meaning.

As an analog, I can point to a tree and say, "Look at that tall tree," or I can say, "Look at that tree," and mean exactly the same thing. The word "tall" colors the meaning some and may be significant, but the second command does not imply that the tree is short. I believe that Type 7 suffixes are like that.

SuStel suggests that in every instance that a Type 7 suffix would be appropriate, it is required, and that the absence of a Type 7 suffix implies specific meaning. He points to page 40 in TKD, where it says:

"The absence of a Type 7 suffix usually means the action is not completed and is not continuous (that is, it is not one of the things indicated by the Type 7 suffixes). Verbs with no Type 7 suffix are translated by the English simple present tense."

He places no weight on the word "usually" and takes a hard line on what it means to omit any Type 7 suffix on a verb. Since he assumes that the Type 7 suffix is required at all times whenever a verb's action is completed or continuous, or "one of the things indicated by the Type 7 suffixes", then IT MUST BE SOMETHING ELSE. Pondering what this "something else" must mean, he has determined that it must imply that the action of the verb doesn't have one of the shapes on a time line described by Type 7. It must be a general trend or a habit or some other imperfective, non-continuous action.

He asked me to describe what I believed his argument was. This is my limited understanding of his argument. There are other details, and there are some inconsistencies, but these are the elements that have been most strongly emphasized that I have managed to take in.

I won't argue that the absence of a Type 7 suffix can't mean what he says it means. I simply argue that the word "usually" deserves a lot of weight, given a lot of canon that has been given translations a lot simpler than they would need to have were they to follow SuStel's strict interpretation. 

I mean, if we are going to be THAT strict and overlook "usually", then why let go of Okrand's advice of translating all these verbs without Type 7 suffixes as simple present tense? I doubt that SuStel wants that.

Okrand wrote TKD while he was in the process of inventing the language. It's like the pirate code. It's not a strict law. "It's more of a guideline, really." Okrand has repeatedly told us to look to canon (though sometimes this involves painful eye rolling). There are a lot of verbs in canon without Type 7. It requires extreme contortions to interpret every single one of them by SuStel's inflexible, absolute instructions.

I respect SuStel a lot.

He has made many great contributions to the KLI and to our understanding of the language in general. I am saddened to read him saying that he "usually gets this treatment". I know that I'm guilty many times of disagreeing with him, but I also know that many times I completely agree with him in many of his arguments with others, and his opinions have informed mine on many occasions.

I also know that if you walk into a bar with a drawn knife you are more likely to find a bar fight than if you just walk in a bar. Inserting words like "required" where they didn't exist and saying what things "cannot" mean, when TKD didn't say "cannot" is the drawn knife.

At times, our ongoing disagreements have gotten quite toxic, enough that I honestly felt like "this town ain't big enough for the both of us," and when I felt that, I left because I honestly felt that the community would suffer at least as much for the loss of him as for the loss of me, and perhaps he would suffer more of a loss than I without the community than I would. That is a deep sign of respect, whether it has been recognized or not.

My hope was that over time, the intensity of disagreement would cool and we could both participate here without the flames and insults, anger and hurt feelings. I still have that hope.

Meanwhile, as much as I do respect SuStel, I do not believe that I do good service to him or anybody else to step down on this issue and say, "Sure, go ahead and add whatever new rule to Type 7 that you want. Make people use it in lots of settings that they otherwise would comfortably omit it, and misinterpret their meaning often when they do omit it because you demand that the absence of a Type 7 suffix universally and without exception implies a specific meaning about continuity and completion of the action, interpreted as a general trend, a habit, or some other form of non-continuous, incomplete action."

I'm just not going there. I sincerely believe SuStel to be mistaken. It happens. I make mistakes. He makes mistakes. It's okay.

But we can only learn if we reconsider things and come to some vague semblance of agreement on how to use the language, and if only one guy thinks that the absence of a Type 7 suffix on a verb has as much specific meaning as the presence of a Type 7 suffix, then that guy is not talking the same language as the rest of us. He's starting a dialect, spoken by one guy.

Unless there are others out there who think that the absence of a Type 7 suffix always as much specific meaning as the presence of it, and that these people can always tell us exactly what that specific meaning is.

So much for being concise. I tried. I failed.

pItlh
lojmIt tI'wI'nuv



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