[Tlhingan-hol] Translating the past

[Bellerophon, modeler]

On Sun, Apr 13, 2014 at 11:15 PM, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:

PRESENT PERFECT TENSE: Daleghpu' (describes an action as having occurred
> prior to the time context)
>
> The last one has tense involved. Maybe Okrand goofed and didn't realize
> it, I dunno. But there are examples out there in which "completion" isn't
> what the sentence is supposed to be about. We know {Daleghpu'} isn't
> supposed to mean "you completed seeing it; you saw the whole thing." It
> just means "you saw it in the past."
>

I'm not convinced the convenient translation "You saw it" means that {legh}
is not a verb that can have both continuous and perfective
aspects. Consider *Where's Waldo?* One might say, {Waldo DaleghtaH 'ach wej
Daleghta'} In English, we sometimes emphasize the perfective aspect of
perception with semantic games: "You're looking at it, but you don't see
it," or, "You saw it, but you didn't look at it."

A verb with a time stamp and without a Type 7 suffix also tells you that
> the verb is not completed and is not continuous.
>
> {wa'Hu' yaS qIp puq} CANNOT mean "yesterday the child hit the officer" as
> a single act. That would be perfective, completed, a simple whole, and
> would require -pu' or -ta'. It CAN mean "yesterday the child hit the
> officer [on and off]."
>

Are you asserting that the lack of an aspect marker implies the aspect of
ongoing, discontinuous action? Then must we say {meQtaH qach} as opposed to
{meQ qach}, to make sure the listener understands that the house is not
burning intermittently?

~'eD

-- 
My modeling blog:          http://bellerophon-modeler.blogspot.com/
My other modeling blog:  http://bellerophon.blog.com/
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