[Tlhingan-hol] Aspect, etc

[SuStel]

On 12/4/2015 3:35 AM, De'vID wrote:
> I'm a native Cantonese Chinese speaker, and like all topolects of
> Chinese, it has aspect but no tense. It's sort of strange when this is
> pointed out to me, because I grew up bilingual (Cantonese and
> English), and the fact that one language has aspect but no tense while
> the other has tense but no aspect never bothered me. It's not
> something I normally even notice unless it's explicitly pointed out.

I really appreciate you telling of your experiences explaining tense and 
aspect to people. It sounds very familiar to me now.

It's not the English doesn't have aspect; English uses a slippery 
combination of tense and aspect. When learning how to analyze sentences, 
children usually learn only the word "tense."

The verb "talk," for instance, has four inflected forms: "talk," 
"talked," "talks," and "talking." Combined with helper words, these form 
lots of tenses, which include aspect information as well:

I talk (simple present)
I am talking (present progressive)
I talked (simple past)
I was talking (past progressive)
I have talked (present perfect simple)
I have been talking (present perfect progressive)
I had talked (past perfect simple)
I had been talking (past perfect progressive)
I will talk (future I simple)
I am going to talk (future I simple going to)
I will be talking (future I progressive)
I will have talked (future II simple)
I will have been talking (future II progressive)
I would talk (conditional I simple)
I would be talking (conditional I progressive)
I would have talked (conditional II simple)
I would have been talking (conditional II progressive)

Klingon, of course, looks nothing like this. It has many inflected forms 
related to time, and only one such helper word (rIntaH).

jIjatlh (simple)
jIjatlhpu' (perfective)
jIjatlhta' / jIjatlh rIntaH (accomplished)
jIjatlhtaH (continuous)
jIjatlhlI' (in progress)
jIjatlhchoH (change)
jIjatlhqa' (resume)
jIjatlhchoHpu' (change perfective)
jIjatlhchoHta' / jIjatlhchoH rIntaH (change accomplished)
jIjatlhchoHtaH (change continuous)
jIjatlhchoHlI' (change in progress)
jIjatlhqa'pu' (resume perfective)
jIjatlhqa'ta' / jIjatlhqa' rIntaH (resume accomplished)
jIjatlhqa'taH (resume continuous)
jIjatlhqa'lI' (resume in progress)

Of these, there may be some evidence that the perfective and 
accomplished forms relate to when an action occurred (i.e., tense). In 
general, however, I have been advocating understanding them as aspects 
only, until such time as we can get more clear evidence and analysis of 
this.

It's also possible that {-beH}, {-rup}, {-nIS}, and {-vIp} are aspects, 
which would make the above list explode in size. I'm not too sure about 
those.

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name