[Tlhingan-hol] Time and Type 7 verb suffixes

[De'vID]

SuStel:
> Do we all understand that there's a difference between what a
Klingon-speaker expresses and what the English translation expresses? The
former is determined by context; the latter is determined by English
grammatical rules. In the case of aspect, the two expressions *always* mean
different things; only context can make one mean the same thing as the
other. To determine exactly what a Klingon sentence is expressing,
therefore, you *must* look to the context in which it is spoken. The
English translation can only guide you to what the speaker has in mind,
unless that translation has been carefully and awkwardly constructed to
include everything in the original and to exclude everything not in the
original.

Since the problem seems to be that some people are reading something from
the English translations back into the Klingon which are absent from the
original, I tried to come up with some examples in Cantonese Chinese (which
like Klingon grammatically marks aspect but not tense) to translate into
Klingon and back to illustrate why aspect markers cannot be optional.  Of
course I have to explain everything in English, but I think I can make
things clear.

I started by trying to imagine a variant of Cantonese where the aspect
markers are optional. I found very quickly that it became impossible to
succinctly express many ideas, because I was forced to explicitly negate
every aspect marker that didn't apply (and whose inapplicability cannot be
inferred from context).  I believe that Klingon would suffer from the same
problem.  This is a *logical* consequence of introducing a rule that aspect
markers are optional, which is inescapable.

SuStel has already given a technical definition of aspect. Intuitively, to
me, aspect is a kind of abstraction that allows you to express a class of
related verbal ideas using one base verb.  In a language without aspect
like English, you often need two separate verbs to express the same related
verbal ideas.

I found one Klingon verb which has a direct correspondent in Chinese but
which does not exist in English: {lol} "be in a martial arts pose".  So
{lol} means to *be* in a stance, whereas {loltaH} means to *maintain* a
stance.

I don't know how Klingons name their martial arts stances, but in Chinese
they're often named after animals:

{Sargh lol} "he is in the Horse stance, he makes the Horse stance"

{Sargh loltaH} "he maintains the Horse stance"

The above describe distinctly different actions.

An instructor might bark:

{vIghro''a' yIlol} "strike the Tiger stance!"

{vIghro''a' yIloltaH} "maintain the Tiger stance!"

If you've watched enough martial arts movies, you'll know what the
difference is.  You'll also know that if you do one when he means the
other, you will be reprimanded.

Another verb which illustrates the difference, but which perhaps requires
less cultural background to understand, is {chop} "bite".  In Chinese,
"bite" without continuous aspect means to bite (essentially the same as the
English meaning), whereas with continuous aspect it means to bite down on
something and continue to apply force with your jaws.  One appropriate
translation might be "gnaw", which is just how {choptaH} is glossed.

I can command my {Qogh}:

{'uSDaj chop} "bite his leg! take a bite out of his leg!"

{'uSDaj choptaH} "gnaw on his leg! bite on his leg and don't let go!"

Again, these are distinctly different actions, which are related to each
other by continuity.

If {-taH} were optional, i.e., if I can infer nothing by its absence, I
wouldn't be able to easily say "take a bite" instead of "gnaw".  I'd *have*
to say, *{'uSDaj chop 'ach choptaHQo'} or something equally unwieldy.
There's just no evidence that Klingon is like this.

There's another pair of verbal ideas which are related in the same way in
both Chinese and Klingon and for which the Klingon pair has appeared in
canon.  The verb "grasp, get a hold of" when marked with continuous aspect
becomes "hold onto" ({'uch} -> {'uchtaH}).  Again, the base verb with and
without the continuous aspect marker describe distinctly different (though
related) actions.  Dropping {-taH} changes the meaning.

This is true even though in many contexts, you can get away with saying
{'uch} even when you really mean {'uchtaH}.  For example, {qama' yI'uch}
*usually* implies {Da'uchpu'DI' yI'uchtaH}.  This doesn't mean {-taH} is
*optional*, just that people will often understand you even if what you say
isn't completely "by the book".

The difference between {'uch} and {'uchtaH} reminds me of something.  I
grew up around both Chinese speakers who learned English as a second
language as adults (immigrants from Chinese countries to North America),
and English speakers who learned Chinese as a second language (either the
descendants of such immigrants, or non-Chinese who learned Chinese
typically in university).  You can tell that someone isn't a native English
speaker by the way they drop tense markers ("Last week I visit my
friend").  The analogous thing is true for Chinese and aspect.

In Chinese, you *have* to say (what in Klingon would be) {'uchtaH} when you
mean {'uchtaH} and not {'uch}.  People will understand you anyway if you
drop the continuous aspect marker, but it sounds like the way "Last week I
visit my friend" sounds in English.  That is, it makes you sound like
you're not a native speaker of the language.  Based on what I know of
Klingon, I believe the same thing is true there as well.  (But of course
with Klingon we have no native speakers whose intuition we can check
against.)

--
De'vID
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://stodi.digitalkingdom.org/pipermail/tlhingan-hol/attachments/20120624/96ec0614/attachment.html>