[Tlhingan-hol] Aspect, etc

[SuStel]

On 12/3/2015 2:12 PM, Will Martin wrote:
> I’m trying to wrap my head around this.
>
> The issue of time context is messy, since most forms of time stamp
> involve a duration as well as a time anchor. {wa’Hu’} is not a specific
> instant, but any of an infinite number of instants between the dawn with
> today’s date and the dawn with one less than today’s date, or it can
> refer to any duration within that larger duration, including the entire
> duration.
>
> Even the instant specified by {DaH} is squishy, since, depending on
> context, it can mean the duration of the expression of the word (which
> is still full of an infinite number of instants), to a vague, larger
> duration moment in time that includes the instants that involve the
> expression of the word.

All this is true, but this is how languages work. In the case of 
perfective, if you specify an elongated time context, then the action is 
completed some time during that time context. Because perfective 
expresses an action without an internal temporal description, you're not 
saying how long the action lasted, just that it occurred and was completed.

> I have always assumed that the perfective supplements the temporal
> information given by the explicit or implied time stamp, and that
> expressions that are timeless are exceptional. They exist, but they are
> relatively rare. Timelessness with the perfective seems even more
> exceptional.

A perfective verb is not timeless, but its time may be unspecified 
and/or merely understood. There is a difference.

> It seems like if you want to say that Kruge “DOESN’T SAY WHEN THIS
> HAPPENS”, then there’s no reason to exclude the future. He could just as
> easily mean, “Thus you will complete seeing it twenty years from now.”
> If there’s no time reference, then there’s no time reference. An absence
> of time reference does not imply past tense, which is what you are
> suggesting.

Except he clearly doesn't mean that. "Then you will have seen it twenty 
years from now" would be a silly thing to say, so that's obviously not 
what he meant. Therefore we know that he means it already happened.

> Valkris tells him that he will find it useful to the mission.

    Qu'vaD lI' net tu'bej
    one finds it useful for the mission

Notice there's no time stamp here, but we KNOW she means the part of the 
mission that's still to come, not the part of the mission they've 
already accomplished. How do we know that?

> She doesn’t say, {jIyajpu’}. Is that to suggest that her understanding
> is incomplete, or habitual, or general, and not referring to any
> specific thing that he has said? No. He has said something, and she has
> understood what he said.

It's general. She's not finished understanding. She's describing her 
state of understanding. This is not a perfective, or even perfect, concept.

> I honestly believe that canon fails to conform to the clear and explicit
> statement in TKD that the absence of a Type 7 verb suffix implies that
> there is no continuation or completion of the action. In practice, these
> suffixes function more like optional helper words in English. You
> include them when their added meaning are noteworthy, and you omit them
> when they are not.

I think we can take TKD at face value in this for most cases, and I can 
demonstrate it over and over; you have to invent new rules "like 
optional helper words" to find a way to justify grammar that explicitly 
contradicts it. Which is simpler?

> It’s noteworthy that the completion of the action of seeing the Genesis
> Project is complete. It’s not noteworthy that the action of
> understanding what Kruge just said is complete. It actually IS complete,
> but that’s not as important as expressing that she understood what he said.

No. The seeing of the Genesis data is complete. The understanding of the 
consequences is a general state that has no completion.

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name