[Tlhingan-hol] Time and Type 7 verb suffixes

[André Müller]

David,
In linguistics it's also a common practice to make a difference between
language-specific terminology and "global" terminology. In many grammatical
descriptions, linguists distinguish them by labeling language-specific
categories with capital letters. For instance, the Latin Ablative case
works different from the Klingon Ablative case ({-vo'}), because the Latin
Ablative has a wider use (more functions). Both Ablatives encompass the
globally defined function of an (uncapitalized!) ablative, meaning the
movement away from something.

Similarly, the Perfective aspect in Russian works differently from the
Perfective aspect marker (了) in Chinese, although both encompass the global
definition of "perfective aspect". It's now quite common to make this
distinction between capitalized and non-capitalized terms, but not everyone
does that. And it might not have been as wide-spread decades ago when the
TKD was written.

So, David, please don't assume that just because a marker is labeled
"perfective" in a grammar of Klingon, it automatically has to work EXACTLY
like the theoretical cross-language description of a perfective aspect, let
alone like the perfective in any natural language such as Chinese, Russian
or English (which doesn't have a stand-alone perfective, as we know).
I speak Chinese, but if I were to apply the same rules I use for the
(capitalized!) Perfective in Chinese also for the marker {-pu'} in Klingon,
both parties of your discussion would disagree with a lot of sentences I'm
writing.

pItlh.
- André

2012/6/9 David Trimboli <david at trimboli.name>

> On 6/8/2012 10:53 AM, ghunchu'wI' 'utlh wrote:
>
>  I won't speak for others, but I make a distinction between what
>> "perfective" means in grammar textbooks and what TKD says it means
>> when describing Klingon grammar. I make a similar distinction
>> between the TKD term "adverbial" which describes a category of
>> individual words, and the textbook term which I think (after an
>> admittedly brief study of things like Wikipedia) describes phrases,
>> calling the individual words "adverbs".
>>
>
> A single word is also a phrase.
>
> What TKD calls adverbials are, in fact, what linguists would call
> adverbials. Okrand has used the term exactly correctly here.
>
>  There are other words used in TKD that have meanings outside Klingon,
>> but when those meanings are not what I'd consider common knowledge I
>> don't rely on them to inform my use of Klingon.
>>
>
> Why? Why would you choose to intentionally ignore the meaning of a word
> when it was used to define the thing under discussion? Why would you assume
> that when Okrand says "perfective," he doesn't mean perfective? Is he
> redefining the word? Is he being sloppy? Is he just plain wrong?
>
> --
> SuStel
> http://www.trimboli.name/
>
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