[Tlhingan-hol] Translating the past

[SuStel]

On 4/12/2014 2:21 AM, Robyn Stewart wrote:

> The loudest advocate for greater use of aspect suffixes on past
> actions, not just past perfect, has alienated people, but the idea
> can be valid even if you don’t like how it’s often delivered.

I've been referred to in worse ways.

 > I said:
> Klingon does not have a marker for past tense any more than it has a
> future one. It has some Type-7 suffixes (not in this syllabus), to
> indicate completed and ongoing actions. These are relevant today because
> Okrand instructs us that "verbs with no type-7suffix are translated by
> the English simple present tense." He goes on to allow such verbs to be
> translated in the future tense where context is appropriate, but does
> not explicitly say that they may also be translated in the past tense.
> Many Klingonists believe that a verb with no type-7 can be translated as
> past present or future, depending on context.
>
> Okrand himself usually uses perfective on actions in the past, and
> translates them with English present perfect (e.g. vImoqpu' –I have
> beaten it).His use isconsistent enough and
>
> There are a few canon examples of Marc translating English past tense
> with no type-7 suffix (or vice versa--but I believe he usually starts
> with the English).

You're focused on looking for a correlation between the presence of a 
suffix and how the phrase is translated. This would make sense if 
Klingon were, as a certain tI'wI' would remind us, a code for English, 
and you always had to translate certain suffixes in certain ways. This 
is, of course, not the case.

For instance, the best translation for the -pu' suffix is not always an 
English perfective sentence.

The Klingon suffixes -pu' and -ta' do not exactly correspond to English 
"have done." They are a combination of past tense and perfective. They 
can indicate that something was done at some past timestamp (loSmaH wa' 
ben jIboghpu' [perfective]) or at some time prior to ANY timestamp (vaj 
Daleghpu' [past perfect]).

-taH and -lI' are easier: they simply mean an action began some time 
before the time context, and will continue for some time after the 
context. Note that they do NOT mean something that happens occasionally 
or habitually; they are CONTINUOUS.

We are told that verbs without a Type 7 suffix are not completed and are 
not continuous; they are explicitly not any of the things indicated by 
any Type 7 suffix. What kinds of verbs can be not completed and not 
continuous? Verbs that indicate general state of being (jIghung), verbs 
that indicate habit or predisposition (lumbe' tlhInganpu'), verbs that 
indicate general truths (mataHmeH maSachnIS), conditional (bIje'be'chugh 
vaj bIHegh) or subjunctive (Dajonlu'pa' bIHeghjaj) verbs, commands 
(yIje'!), wishes (batlh bIHeghjaj), equivalences (tlhIngan maH), and so on.

Okrand does not obey the rules laid out in TKD at all times. It's 
difficult to tell when he's intentionally saying something a certain 
way, when he's forgetting the rules, and when he's intentionally 
ignoring the rules.

> Hoch nuH Daqel'a' = did you consider every weapon? KGT p. 107

It's on p. 109.

There is no past tense in the Klingon, so the translation cannot be 
considered definitive. Lacking context, as this sentence does, without a 
translation I would simply render this as "do you consider each weapon?" 
His translation of "Did you consider every weapon?" could apply in 
multiple contexts, one of which is that the speaker is not interested in 
whether you've considered every weapon PRIOR TO NOW (-pu'), but just 
whether your thinking has generally considered every weapon.

However, it does look strongly like this sentence is being used in a 
past-perfective way (in the past, considered as a whole without internal 
structure).

> naH jajmeywIj betleH vIyanbe' = In my veg. days I did not wield a
> bat'leth. KGT p. 107

This doesn't mean that there was a particular time during my vegetable 
days when I didn't wield a batleth; it means that during my vegetable 
days I was not predisposed to wielding a batleth. It is a general truth, 
and so does not deserve an aspect suffix.

> Here’s an interesting one where I would have expected –pu’butEnglish
> present perfect is translatedwith no aspect:
> narghbe'chugh SuvwI' qa' taH may'. = If a warrior's spirit has not
> escaped, the battle is still going on. TKW p.147

It's not talking about a particular instance in which, prior to the time 
context, the spirit hasn't escaped; it's talking about the idea of a 
spirit escaping.

If you were actually fighting a battle and were looking at a particular 
warrior, you might say {wej narghpu' qa'; taH may'}.

> Here’s one with English past tense translated as Klingon perfective.
> *tera’ vatlh DISpoH cha’maH loS bong QongmeH qItI’nga’ Duj tI’ang
> ghompu’ DIvI’ ’ejDo’ ’entepray’.
> *A sleeper ship of this class, the T’Ong, was encountered in the 24th
> century by the/U.S.S. Enterprise/.^TM
>
> The relevant part of that sentence is ghompu'^= encountered, but I
> didn't want to be accused of obfuscating by excerpting.

It's actually perfective aspect and past tense in the English 
(preterite), meaning it happens and is done as a whole unit. -pu' covers 
this meaning; this is an example.

> I would say, “I don’t want to resurrect anold argument,”but quite
> frankly I want to resurrect anythingthat could result in us speaking
> better Klingon. I’ve been a huge advocate for a sentence with no aspect
> translatable as simple present, pastor future, but canon isn’t
> supporting it. Marc has very consistently not used it that way.

Here are some terms. They do not always match what is in TKD.

PERFECTIVE: Aspect indicating something is viewed as a simple whole.

PAST PERFECTIVE: Past event seen as a whole. Also called "preterite" or 
"simple past."

PERFECT: Indicates something happened prior to the time context of the 
sentence. Sometimes considered an aspect.

TENSE: Indicates when something happened, but not how it flows in time.

IMPERFECTIVE: Various aspects indicating something is viewed with 
internal structure, it's "temporal shape." There are many kinds of 
these: e.g., continuous, progressive, habitual, iterative.

Klingon -pu' and -ta' have examples showing both PERFECTIVE and PERFECT 
aspects. They can mean either of these things. TKD calls it 
"perfective," but the definition is not strictly correct. What most 
people believe, incorrectly as I see it, is that these suffixes indicate 
what is correctly called perfect aspect.

Klingon -taH and -lI' are examples of IMPERFECTIVE aspects. We are 
looking at the internal structure of the event, noting that is has a 
beginning sometime prior to the time context and an ending sometime 
after the time context.

There are many other kinds of imperfective aspects than the progressive 
kinds indicated by -taH and -lI'. Klingon doesn't have suffixes for 
them. But it does have the rule that when a verb lacks a Type 7 suffix, 
the meaning is specifically not -pu'/-ta' and not -taH/-lI'. This is 
what Okrand is doing when he uses suffixes in a place that seems odd to 
someone who thinks a bare verb can refer to a perfective idea.

> is there really enough justification in“no past tense”to use the
> aspectless verb in a way Marc almost never does?

Tenses tell you when something happens. Past tense tells you it happened 
prior to thet time context. If {vIleghpu'} means "I saw it prior to 
now," then that surely is a tense: you're telling me WHEN you saw it.

Tenses tell us when something happens. Aspects tell us about the 
structure of the event. -pu' and -ta' have canon showing that they tell 
us both, or at least either, of these things: that something happened 
prior to a time context (tense), and sometimes that the event is being 
described without reference to its internal structure (aspect).

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