[Tlhingan-hol] A demonstration of aspect we can all follow

[Robyn Stewart]

At 13:12 '?????' 6/7/2012, David Trimboli wrote:
>I've thought of an easy way to demonstrate the "it's not a concrete 
>action" effect of perfective and continuous. In English.

But include the Klingon too, please.

>A ship's captain calls down to the brig. An interrogator was 
>assigned the job of extracting important information from a 
>prisoner. The captain barks, "Report status!"
>
>Now consider the possible responses.
>
>"I interrogate the prisoner."

If he said, {qama' vIyu'} I think I would be more likely to read it 
as, "I will interrogate the prisoner."  I doubt anyone here would 
choose anything but {qama' vIyu'lI'}. Or I suppose {-taH} if it's 
more of a joy[']ride than a directed interrogation.

>The ship's captain is giving a tour to a dignitary. They stop by the 
>brig, and the interrogator greets them. The dignitary asks, "What do 
>you do here?" The interrogator replies, "I interrogate the prisoner."
>
>The interrogator is describing what he does *customarily*. He's not 
>talking about a particular instance of interrogation. The moment he 
>switches to continuous aspect, "I am interrogating the prisoner," he 
>is no longer describing his *job*, he's describing his current 
>action, a concrete instance of an action.

naDev qama' vIyu' - I'm totally happy with that, too.

>Klingon works in exactly the same way. When the captain says {Dotlh 
>ja'}, the interrogator would reply {qama' vIyu'taH} or {qama' 
>vIyu'lI'}, not {qama' vIyu'}. To say the latter would be like giving 
>the captain a job description. "I know you interrogate prisoners, 
>dog, but what are you doing about this one?!"
>
>Now for the perfective. English can usually only express perfective 
>in the past tense, and using the simple past tense. If the captain 
>asks the interrogator, "What did you do today?" the interrogator 
>might answer, "I interrogated the prisoner." He wouldn't use the 
>past continuous "I was interrogating the prisoner" to answer that 
>question, even though it would be completely true. "I was 
>interrogating the prisoner" would be used in cases like "While I was 
>interrogating the prisoner..."
>
>But even if the interrogator wants to describe his job description 
>in the past, he would say, "I interrogated the prisoner." English 
>does not let you distinguish between perfective and imperfective in 
>the past tense. You have to add other context to make yourself clear.
>
>         "I interrogated the prisoner all day." (imperfective)
>         "I interrogated the prisoner and got the information." (perfective)
>
>This is where Klingon differs from English, because Klingon can 
>indeed distinguish between perfective and imperfective in the past. 
>{wa'Hu' X-pu'} is past perfective; {wa'Hu' X} is past imperfective. 
>The former says an event occurred and completed yesterday; the 
>latter says X was true or occurred regularly or habitually or 
>theoretically or whatever (except not completely or continuously) yesterday.
>
>         qaStaHvIS jaj Hoch qama' vIyu' (imperfective)

This one surprises me. I would use {vIyu'taH} or {vIyu'lI'} there. 
Why didn't you?

>         qama' vIyu'pu' 'ej De' vISuqta' (perfective)

I would do that too.

I'm really looking forward to other people's thought on this, and am 
excited that people may not be as far apart as the words make it look 
as though we are.

- Qov