[Tlhingan-hol] Time and Type 7 verb suffixes

[De'vID]

lojmIt tI'wI' nuv:
>> {wa'Hu' 'uQ vISop.}
>>
>> I don't believe that is a grammatical error, even though it describes
>> a single event that occurred in its entirety during the time span of
>> the time stamp. I honestly believe you are the only person in the
>> Universe who might claim that it is an error because it lacks
>> {-pu'}.

I don't believe it's a *grammatical* error, but I don't think it means what
you seem to think it means.

Note that on TKD p.40 it says that verbs without a Type 7 suffix can be
translated, when the context is appropriate, by the future tense.  But it
says nothing about the past tense.  I think that if a verb without a Type 7
suffix can be translated into *either* future or past tense, MO would have
said so here.  The fact that he omitted mentioning the past tense here is,
I think, because an aspectless verb usually cannot refer to an event in the
past (since past events are typically either completed or ongoing until the
present).

SuStel:
> It is not an error. It just doesn't mean exactly what you think it means.
It means that eating dinner was happening at some time yesterday. It would
not be used to tell a story like "Yesterday I sat at the table, ate dinner,
and then got up." That story would require perfective suffixes on its
verbs. But it could be used, say, to confirm that you didn't skip a meal
yesterday.

I concur with SuStel's interpretation of {wa'Hu' 'uQ vISop}.

Since people generally eat dinner every day, I tried to think of an example
with an activity that someone might do once every several days.  So suppose
someone has an exercise schedule that rotates between {yIt}, {qet}, {Qal},
and {leS}.

If he wanted to say, "I swam (a single, completed event) yesterday", he
would say {wa'Hu' jIQalpu'} or {wa'Hu' jIQalta'}.  {wa'Hu' jIQal} *cannot*
have that meaning, because it implies (per TKD p.40) that the action of
swimming is neither completed nor continuous.

OTOH, if he was asked which day of the exercise schedule yesterday was, he
could say {wa'Hu' jIQal} "I swam yesterday" (i.e., it is a general
statement of truth that I swam yesterday, without reference to a specific
completed event).

So both {wa'Hu' jIQal} and {wa'Hu' jIQalpu'} can be used to describe that
he went swimming yesterday, but the suffix {-pu'} is not *optional* in that
its presence or absence changes the meaning of what is said about the
action.

--
De'vID
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