[Tlhingan-hol] Aspect, etc

[SuStel]

On 12/3/2015 10:22 AM, Will Martin wrote:
> I honestly believe that {HoH} is a bad verb to use as a clarifying
> example of the use of the perfective. The problem is that the action of
> the verb implies a result. The action of the verb is not a process so
> much as it is the production of a result. I can attack you, or even give
> you a mortal wound and you can remain alive, but if you are still alive,
> then unless I go out of the way to note the explicit beginning or
> continuation of the action with {-choH} or {-taH}, I doubt that anyone
> would use {HoH} to describe an action that doesn’t include the moment of
> death of the victim.

This is usually true in modern colloquial English, but it's not always 
true. Consider Polonius in Hamlet who shouts "Oh, I am slain" BEFORE he 
dies.

> If you say {wa’Hu’ targh vIHoH}, then I assume the targh died yesterday.
> Maybe I’d figure out the targh didn’t die yesterday if you said, {wa’Hu
> targh vIHoHchoH} or {wa’Hu’ targh vIHoHtaH}, but if you don’t note that
> you simply BEGAN to kill or that you CONTINUED to kill, I would quite
> naturally assume the death of the targh. Otherwise, you are making an
> empty, exaggerated claim.

You could also be saying you went targ-hunting yesterday, or that 
yesterday you were a targ-killer but today you're not.

But because TKD says "The absence of a Type 7 suffix usually means that 
the action is not completed and is not continuous," we must generally 
assume that you did NOT complete killing the targ. You did not add 
{-pu'}, so you did not complete the action.

I agree that {HoH} is a poor choice for an example, because in English 
it carries the notion of completion with it. This may or may not be true 
in Klingon. Whether or not it is, if you're describing a completed 
action, you must use a perfective suffix.

> I work mostly from my understanding of the difference, in English,
> between tense and the perfective. Yesterday, I killed a targh.
> Yesterday, I had killed a targh. Using the time stamp {wa’Hu’} is,
> alone, enough to establish the English equivalent of the past tense.
> Adding the {-pu’} makes it past perfect, which does not imply the death
> occurred yesterday. It implies that the death occurred yesterday or
> before, and most likely before, since if it happened yesterday, I
> probably wouldn’t have bothered to note the perfective.

That's not the difference between tense and perfective.

Tense tells WHEN an action took place—was it in the present, the past, 
or the future?

Perfective tells HOW an action took place in time—it viewed as a simple 
whole without internal temporal composition.

A perfect verb (not perfective) tells that an action took place in the 
past and is now completed. What you're describing above is a perfect. 
It's a combination of tense and aspect.

Despite what it says in TKD, Klingon doesn't have a pure perfective 
aspect. The suffixes {-pu'} and {-ta'} are used for both perfective 
aspect ({loSmaH ben jIboghpu'} or {QI'tomerDaq Heghpu' Hoch} and the 
perfect (there are examples, although I can't find any at the moment). 
In most canonical instances of {-pu'} or {-ta'} one cannot prove whether 
they are perfective or perfect.

What tends to trip up most English-speaking Klingonists is that English 
does not have separate tense and aspect markers, so it's difficult to 
understand the Klingon based on the English translation. For instance:

    Daleghpu'
    you have seen it

TKD uses a convention of translating {-pu'} and {-ta'} with the present 
perfect. "It is often translated by the English present perfect /(have 
done something)./" This is only a convention, not equivalent grammar, 
and it obscures the idea of perfective aspect, in which the action is 
viewed as an indivisible whole. In the example above, the present 
perfect interpretation is given, in which prior to now you saw something 
and completed seeing it. A purely perfective translation is difficult to 
give, because English doesn't work that way.

    Daleghpu'
    you see/saw/will see something and complete/completed/will complete
    seeing it

There's no way, based on the example alone, even with the context of 
Kruge saying it to Valkris about the Genesis report, to say whether 
Kruge is using perfective aspect or a perfect construction. This is the 
case with nearly all canonical examples.

Given the relatively firm way TKD tells us that Klingon does not express 
tenses in its verbs, I prefer to interpret all instances of {-pu'} or 
{-ta'} as true perfective aspect unless the interpretation requires 
otherwise.


Perfective aspect
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfective_aspect>

Perfect (grammar)
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_(grammar)>

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name