[Tlhingan-hol] Time and Type 7 verb suffixes

[De'vID jonpIn]

André Müller:
> 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.

I'm a native (Cantonese) Chinese speaker, and I went back and read
through all the recent posts about aspect, mentally translating each
example into Chinese with the corresponding aspect markers (Wikipedia
has a non-exhaustive list here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantonese_grammar#Verbal_Aspect).  Since
I learned Klingon through English, it had never occurred to me before
that {-pu'} and {-taH} can be quite naturally expressed in Chinese.

I also re-read the relevant sections of TKD and skimmed the several
pages on perfective vs. imperfective in Comrie.

I think I have an understanding of aspect that is compatible with TKD,
all the canon examples brought up so far (even including the ones from
{paq'batlh}), and the formal grammatical definition of "aspect" from
Comrie.  Of course, I wouldn't presume that aspect in Klingon works
the same way that it does in Chinese, but at least my mental mapping
from the former to the latter didn't result in anything that appeared
obviously wrong to me.

There are two potential differences between Klingon and Chinese aspect
that I should note.  First, in Klingon, {Ha'DIbaH} can mean "meat" or
"the meat", whereas in Chinese the general concept of meat and a
specific piece of meat are expressed differently.  So, {Ha'DIbaH
vISop} can mean "I eat meat (in general)" (habitual) and "I (will) eat
the meat (this piece of meat in particular)" (neither continuous nor
perfective, but also not habitual), whereas in Chinese those would be
expressed by two different sentences.  Second, in Chinese, when there
is a timestamp with a perfective aspect marker, the timestamp appears
to mark the completion of the action.  (At least, it does with the
examples sentences I tried, but maybe I haven't thought hard enough
about this.  I have a feeling that it isn't that simple.)  Of course,
this does not mean Klingon has to work the same way, but it's one
possibility.

The result of this exercise is that, as far as the interpretation of
the given sentences are concerned, I agreed with SuStel's
interpretation much more often than I disagreed with it.  I think his
interpretation of the following sentence from TKD 4.2.7 is correct:
"The absence of a Type 7 suffix usually means that the action is not
completed and is not continuous (that is, it is not one of the things
indicated by the Type 7 suffixes)."  That is, I agree that (excepting
when other context indicates otherwise) the absence of a Type 7 suffix
means that the action is not one that would be described using a verb
with {-pu'}, {-ta'}, {-taH}, or {-lI'}, and conversely, when it is one
that would be described using such a suffix, that suffix is (again,
barring context) actually required.

The alleged contradictions from canon can, at least in my mind, be
explained quite easily.  This doesn't necessarily mean that SuStel's
interpretation of Klingon aspect is right, but (to me at least) it's
not as obviously wrong as some people seem to think.

-- 
De'vID