[Tlhingan-hol] Aspect, etc

Thu Dec 3 08:59:21 PST 2015

Given that in years past, I had a knee-jerk negative reaction to your posts, and given that email does not convey emotion (or lack of emotion) effectively, I want to start by making it very clear that I’m older now and no longer feel anything negative about you or your opinions. I respect you. You’ve clearly put a lot more work into understanding the language in recent years than I have. Your opinion carries weight with me, and I’ve often found myself cheering you on when you weigh in on grammatical points on this list.

That said, I think that your accurate and thorough understanding of the difference between perfective and perfect is probably clearer than the actual use of {-pu’} and {-ta’} in canon or in general usage. The example that you give, {vaj Daleghpu’}, from ST3 does not imply that at the time context of the statement the completion of the action occurs. Kruge is recognizing that in the context of “now”, the action of Valkris’s seeing the Genesis Project has already been completed. Nobody is talking about any precise moment when that completion occurred, except to point from now into the vague past. Maybe she saw it half an hour ago. Maybe she saw it last year.

This is exactly what I’m suggesting.

I think that you would be right, if Klingon worked the way it says it is supposed to work, but in reality, I think it’s sloppier than that. I think that I would enjoy the higher level of temporal precision of speaking a language that behaves as you’d like Klingon to behave. I like anything that cleans up ambiguity and makes statements clearer.

But I don’t think Okrand or Paramount or even the people on this list actually speak a language that does that. I have been personally broken-hearted when I formed any of several theories about how Klingon is supposed to work, only to have Okrand screw it up by not being as consistent as I’d prefer that he was, but all my wishes were for naught. Okrand likes the idea of Klingon acting like a “natural” language, with all the implied imperfections.

I think that the perfective suffixes in Klingon have a problem in that they are NOT consistent about whether the completion of the action of the verb occurs DURING the period of time indicated by the time stamp or time context, or if that completion occurred BEFORE that time stamp or time context. I think it’s muddy.

Believe it or not, I will be as happy as you to discover otherwise. Greater precision is prettier. It gives the language an aesthetic beauty. Meanwhile, the actual language has rust, dust, and grit, and I think that {-pu’} and {-ta’} are among the dustier, grittier details of the language.

Yes, I have been confusing perfect and perfective. Meanwhile, I honestly think the language does the same.

I do appreciate the education you’ve offered to clarify the difference between perfect and perfective. You’ve improved my understanding of the concepts, though I’m uncertain that they apply to this language.

pItlh
lojmIt tI'wI'nuv

> On Dec 3, 2015, at 11:21 AM, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:
> 
> 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
> 
> 
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