[Tlhingan-hol] Time and Type 7 verb suffixes

[David Trimboli]

On 6/7/2012 3:25 PM, Robyn Stewart wrote:
>
> At 11:23 '?????' 6/7/2012, you wrote:
>
> So what would you do with this one:
>
> chorI'lI''a'? puchpa'Daq jIHpu' .
>
> or
>
> chorI'lI''a'? puchpa'Daq jIHtaH
>
> The person wants to know if they missed a hail while they were in the
> bathroom. The point isn't that they were in the bathroom and completed
> that event at some time now past. The point is that they continued to be
> in the bathroom throughout the time while the possible hailing was in
> progress, but now they're back at their duty station.

I think there are many ways to say this, and none of them are 
necessarily more right than others.

chorI''a'?
Did you hail me?
Asking about the facts of the situation, like the difference between 
"Was I hailed?" and "Was I hailed at that time?"

chorI'lI''a'
Were you continuously hailing me (until I answered)?
Asking about the hailing event, which is described as taking place over 
a period.

chorI'pu''a'
Did you hail me?
Asking about whether an act of hailing occurred and was completed.

puchpa'Daq jIHtaH
I was in the bathroom.
I was inhabiting the bathroom over a span of time.
**Note that whenever Okrand uses -Daq <pro> to describe the location of 
a movable object, he uses {-taH}, whereas whenever he describes the 
location of a permanent object he uses no aspect suffix.**

puchpa'Daq jIHpu'
I was in the bathroom (and then left).

puchpa'Daq jIH
My location is described as the bathroom, but I'm not saying anything 
about the span of time I was there, except that it was not completed and 
not continuous. This might mean I'm describing it habitually or 
hypothetically.

I don't know how carefully we should look at verbs-as-pronouns, as they 
tend to be exceptional. In any case I wouldn't expect any one of these 
interpretations to necessarily work sensibly with any other interpretation.

In your particular context, my first instinct is to say

chorI'pu''a'? puchpa'Daq jIHtaH.

The hailing was begun and completed (perfective). At the same time (our 
time context), I was already in the bathroom, and when the hailing was 
completed I was still in the bathroom (continuous).

But again, other expressions could be constructed using other 
combinations, which would work just as well in this situation.

> I'm looking for an instance where I look at something you'd write and
> think that it doesn't make sense like that. I'm often happy with or
> without a perfective, where you'd prefer one, but then when I write a
> narrative in English I often don't indicate that actions are complete.
> "I load the airplane. There are seventeen bags of potatoes." And so on.

The trouble with this is that since English doesn't separate tense and 
aspect very well, and because it has different levels of colloquialism 
for different speakers and audiences, I'm not really sure how to take 
your sentence for translation.

In English, we often use the simple present tense to tell a story that 
takes place in the past. "So I get on the bus and see my arch-enemy 
there. Of course, I get off again immediately." The very same story 
requires past tense when told more formally: "So I got on the bus and 
saw my arch-enemy there. Of course, I got off again immediately." Even 
more casual is to occasionally throw a verb into present perfect tense: 
"So I've gotten on the bus and I see my arch-enemy there..."

I read your sentence, "I load the airplane. There are seventeen bags of 
potatoes," as an in-person story told to an audience you're being 
careful with. The use of present tense tells me you're being casual; the 
complete lack of textual link between loading the airplane and the 
presence of the bags tells me you're strongly separating each idea, 
presumably so that your audience doesn't miss anything, sacrificing an 
integrated narrative for the sake of clarity.

With those assumptions, I'd translate this into Klingon as

muD Duj vItebmoH. (simple fact, not given a temporal structure)
wa'maH Soch 'oQqar buq tu'lu'. (also a simple fact)

There is no action here.

Now, if you asked me to translate "I loaded the airplane with seventeen 
sacks of potatoes," I see an action.

muD Duj vItebmoHpu'; (it happened and it's done)
'oHDaq wa'maH Soch 'oQqar buq vIlanpu'. (it happened and it's done)

Or perhaps you wanted to tell me about something that was happening 
*while* you were loading the plane:

muD Duj vItebmoHlI'. (it was in progress)
'oHDaq wa'maH Soch 'oQqar buq vIlanpu' 'e' vItu' (the first part 
happened and was done; the second part isn't allowed an aspect suffix)

OR

'oHDaq wa'maH Soch 'oQqar but vIlan 'e' vItu' (the first part was true: 
I *had* loaded that many potatoes, but I'm describing it as a fact of 
the past, not an action that is begun and completed)

> I'd prefer to have a model of the perfective that embraces all the
> examples in TKD than to have to handwave and say that Marc hadn't quite
> worked out -pu' when he wrote those. It's more consistent overall, as he
> hasn't strenuously contradicted that canon elsewhere since. Your {wa'maH
> ben boghpu'} point is strong. Conduct gymnastics to explain it, or
> re-envision the framework such that it sits easily there?

I haven't found any examples in TKD that contradicts what I have said. 
The opposition sometimes points to the (occasional) present perfect 
translations of -pu' as evidence that -pu' is really present perfect 
(but they don't admit that it's therefore a tense and not an aspect at 
all), but I believe Okrand's warning about how he translates aspect is 
specifically meant to mean "The English translation uses tense instead 
of aspect, so only the general meaning gets across, but it's the best I 
can do with short space." Present perfect translations, in other words, 
are *close enough*.

> I guess I'm addressing SuStel, but I certainly want to see what others
> have to say. What I'm edging towards here is that despite the vehemence
> of the arguments, when it actually comes down to writing a narrative
> that others understand and accept, there isn't a huge difference between
> the camps. It's okay to explain something a different way if we
> understand one another's tlhIngan Hol, right?

I certainly think so. What I'm saying isn't really that big a leap when 
reading the canon, since I think Okrand generally tried to remember 
this. I don't claim that it's always borne out in the canon, but it 
generally is.

I think the big deal is that grammarians who have been using present 
perfect tense instead of perfective aspect for years and years would 
have to accept that they have confused the two all these years. I know I 
did.

-- 
SuStel
http://www.trimboli.name/