[Tlhingan-hol] Time and Type 7 verb suffixes

[De'vID]

De'vID:
>> Now, we could just be both wrong, but as far as I can tell, his claim amounts to "when MO uses the word 'aspect', he really means what linguists mean by that term (even though he simplifies things for a popular audience)".  That's it.  Given that MO is a linguist writing for non-linguists, why is this assumption considered so unreasonable?

ghunchu'wI':
> It's not unreasonable on the face of it.
>
> However, if you look at how TKD actually explains what it means when it says "perfective", I think it matches the general linguistic concept of "perfect" instead. Look at Klingon perfective as describing the present state resulting from a past event (adjusting appropriately for the time context) and see if you don't agree that's in closer agreement with TKD's definition and usage than the idea of describing an entire action from start to finish.

I didn't mention "perfective" in the above, because I specifically
wanted to sidestep the whole issue with "perfective" to focus on just
whether "aspect" really means "aspect".

If the word "aspect" in TKD really means "aspect", there are logical
consequences.  A language with aspect markers needs some way to
indicate when none of the aspect markers apply, or a lot of things
will just become very ambiguous.  Either the inapplicable aspect
markers will have to be implicitly or explicitly negated (there's no
evidence of this in Klingon), or there has to be an aspect marker
meaning "other aspect markers don't apply" (we know that such a thing
doesn't exist in Klingon), or the absence of an aspect marker must
indicate that the verb is not conveying that aspect (which seems to be
what TKD actually says).

Unless I'm missing something, the claim that Type 7 suffixes are
optional is completely independent of the debate over the meaning of
{-pu'} "perfective".  Indeed, the examples raised so far involve
{-taH}.  (I think everyone agrees on the meaning of {-taH}
"continuous", right?)  Whether "perfective" in Klingon means
"perfective" or "perfect" or even something else, I just don't see how
you can read TKD to say that Type 7 suffixes are optional.  So where
is this idea coming from?  Does reading {-pu'} as "perfect" somehow
require Type 7 suffixes to be optional (i.e., for their absence not to
indicate a lack of both continuity and completion)?

Let's separate the two issues.  Are you really saying that the lack of
Type 7 suffixes on a verb doesn't usually indicate that the action "is
not completed and is not continuous"?

-- 
De'vID