[Tlhingan-hol] Time and Type 7 verb suffixes

[David Trimboli]

On 6/26/2012 11:01 AM, ghunchu'wI' 'utlh wrote:
>
> On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 1:38 PM, De'vID <de.vid.jonpin at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> 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".
>
> Aspect is a category with a wide variety of specific meanings. In
> Klingon, expressing aspect is restricted to only two of those
> meanings (with the option of a separate "intent" or "progress"
> meaning being superimposed). So if you ask whether Klingon aspect
> really means what a comprehensive linguistic reference lists as
> "aspect", I'm going to have to say no. It only means one of
> three(five) things: action is marked as finished(accomplished),
> action is marked as ongoing(proceeding), or action is not marked as
> one of the other two(four).

No language uses every possible aspect; that doesn't mean it isn't
aspect. "Aspect" is not "every manner on this list of aspects," and it's
not "a subset of this list of specific aspects." Aspect describes the
manner in which an action is said to occur.

Klingon appears to have seven distinct aspects:

Completed (-pu')
Accomplished (-ta')
Continuous (-taH)
Progressive (-lI')
Inceptive (-choH)
Resumptive (-qa')
Not-completed-accomplished-continuous-or-progressive (lack of a type 7
suffix)

(These aspect names are not in any way official or sanctioned by any
linguists. Indeed, names for aspects may change depending on who is
talking about them.)

I don't have a good name for the last one, because it covers a whole
bunch of possible meanings. Note that none of these meanings are
"continuous but I didn't feel like mentioning that," and the like.

Note also that people often waffle about whether to combine type 3 and 7
suffixes. If I begin to move toward you continuously, do I use both
-choH and -lI'? The reason for the waffling is because both suffixes
describe aspects and combining them requires you to ask whether one
suffix applies to another or to the main verb. There is no reason why
you should feel compelled to combine them like that, unless you're going
for a fairly complex meaning.

>> 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.
>
> A lot of things are *already* ambiguous.

I agree here: that a grammatical situation may bring ambiguity is not an
argument against that situation.

> Ambiguity is not a disaster unless you try to base an argument on its
> absence when it is not absent. However, the simplest resolution to
> the purported problem is to say that when none of the aspect suffixes
> are present, the meaning such a suffix would have is not relevant to
> the meaning of the sentence. In a situation where the difference
> between "marked for aspect" and "not marked for aspect" is important,
> it's completely reasonable to interpret an unmarked verb as
> expressing the absence of what the suffix would represent. In a
> situation where the difference is not important, I believe it's
> completely reasonable to interpret a missing suffix as providing no
> specific information.

If we weren't told explicitly that lacking a type 7 suffix specifically
means not-that-suffix's-meaning, I would agree. But we *are* told that,
and we should follow it whenever it makes sense to do so.

> I'm afraid any examples I might give to support my belief are all
> going to be dismissed because they necessarily lack an aspect suffix,
> and thus are going to be interpreted by those holding a contrary
> belief as necessarily lacking a meaning that would be expressed by
> such a suffix.

But how do they support your belief, if the only way to arrive at your
interpretation is to ignore the rule in the book? I don't understand the 
logic by which you ignore that very clear rule when you feel it's not 
relevant.

> Incidentally, I definitely do not go along with "if W you must use
> X", because I do not think W (strict linguistic definition of
> perfective) and X (Klingon perfective) are the same thing.

Because De'vID and Qov were willing to *discuss* this reasonably, rather 
than burn me as a heretic like everyone else did, I have been able to 
refine my undestanding of what's happening in the Klingon. I agree that 
the "perfective" label in TKD is wrong, or insufficient. -pu' and -ta' 
appear to include multiple meanings of "completed," including "finish" 
and "undertake and finish."

I stick by my argument, however, that a sentence meant to describe a 
completed or continuous action *must* include the appropriate suffix 
(again, for certain values of "must"). If the suffix is not there, the 
meaning is *definitely* not there. But an action isn't *objectively* 
completed or continuous; whether you use those suffixes depends on the 
focus of your mind's eye, and whether a continuous or completed meaning 
is required for what you're saying. This is not the same as "if I leave 
it off it might still mean that."

-- 
SuStel
http://www.trimboli.name/