[Tlhingan-hol] Translating the past

[SuStel]

> Subject: Re: [Tlhingan-hol] Translating the past
> 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.

Remember, the TRANSLATION of the verb is given as "you have seen it."

Perhaps I'm wrong here, but when Kruge finds out that Valkris has seen
the Genesis tape, and he says {vaj Daleghpu'} "then you have seen it," I
don't get the sense that he means "you saw it all the way through" or
"you finished seeing it." He means "you looked at it, you saw what it
contains."

Thinking about it, perhaps this IS a good example of perfective aspect:
she saw it, and he's treating the act of seeing as a single, completed,
whole. Not completed as in she saw the whole thing, but completed as in
she looked at it and then stopped looking 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?

No to the first question, and a qualified yes to the second. TKD says at
the beginning of the section on Type 7 verb suffixes—and I'm
paraphrasing here, because my TKD isn't with me—that verbs without a
Type 7 suffix are not continuous and are not completed. There are kinds
of verbs that aren't continuous and aren't completed that also aren't
"discontinuous": for instance, {HoS tlhInganpu'} "Klingons are strong."
I'm describing a general truth, or perhaps I'm describing the conditions
of a particular batch of Klingons, not an action that is in progress or
that has been completed. Or I could say {yIHmey vIHoH} "I kill
tribbles." I'm describing my predisposition to kill tribbles, not an act
of killing that is in progress or that has been completed.

I could also say {wa'Hu' yIHmey vIHoH} "yesterday I killed tribbles."
I'm still not describing an ongoing or completed act; I'm describing
something that happened throughout the course of the day yesterday, or
my predisposition yesterday to kill tribbles. ("You wanna go kill some
tribbles today?" "Nah, I killed tribbles yesterday.") But if I said
{wa'Hu' yIHmey vIHoHpu'} "yesterday I killed tribbles" (notice the
English makes no grammatical distinction), I am now saying I performed
an extermination AT SOME POINT. It wasn't just an activity that happened
at various times yesterday, or a general predisposition; it happened
once and it was finished. That's perfective aspect.

So if we say {meQ qach}, it CANNOT mean "the building is burning in an
ongoing manner," and it CANNOT mean "the building burned and completed
burning." It might mean "the building burns" as a statement of its
predilection to catch fire (e.g., "buildings burn; they do, in fact,
burn"). But when you say {meQtaH qach}, you're saying the building is
burning in an ongoing manner. The building was burning before the time
context started, and it will still be burning after the time context
passes. Obviously, buildings don't usually burn intermittently, but if
they did, you could use an aspectless verb to talk about it.

This is easy to see in verbs describing states. You say {ngaQ lojmIt} to
describe a locked door, not {ngaQtaH lojmIt}. You're not talking about
how the door was locked before the time context and will continue to be
locked after the time context; you're simply describing the state of the
door. The door IS locked at these times, but that's not what your
sentence is about. On the other hand, if you were trying to pick the
lock, and you failed, you could say {ngaQtaH lojmIt}. In this case you
ARE talking about the door being locked before and still being locked
going forward; now the condition of the door over the course of time IS
what you're talking about.

-- 
David Trimboli
http://www.trimboli.name/