[Tlhingan-hol] Klingon Word of the Day: tey'be'

[SuStel]

On 3/7/2016 3:23 PM, Alan Anderson wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 7, 2016 at 1:24 PM, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:
>>
>> I don't follow you. They promoted her. The act of promoting is complete.
>> They are no longer promoting her because the promoting is finished. That's
>> the perfective.
>>
>> It's not perfective in English because English uses past tense for that sort
>> of thing.
>
> "They promoted her" is complete *right now*, and "They are no longer
> promoting her" *right now*, because of the past tense wording.

That's not how Klingon perfective works. The perfective suffixes don't 
tell you WHEN something is completed, just that they ARE completed.

{loSmaH wej ben jIboghpu'} means "I was born forty-three years ago," not 
"as of forty-three years ago, I had already been born." Forty-three 
years ago, the act of me being born occurred and was completed.

> I am pretty sure you don't equate English past tense with Klingon
> perfective, but it seems to me like that's what you're trying to do
> here. If a reasonably harmless {ngugh} is added to get {ngugh lumum}
> "They promoted her at that time," would you still want to see a
> perfective suffix on the verb?

Yes. At that time, they promoted her, and the promotion was a completed 
act. {ngugh lunumpu'}. The action is expressed as a single event, not 
one that takes place over time. Perfective does not mean "prior to the 
time context, something happens." That's tense. Klingon perfective CAN 
be on an action that takes place in the past, because Klingon does not 
mark for tense, but the perfective suffix itself is not indicating that, 
it's indicating the completion of the action.

As Okrand once wrote to me,

    [M]ost of the time when you refer to an action that has been
    completed (an action marked by -pu' or -ta'), it has happened
    already (that is, it is in the past), so the suffixes "feel like"
    (and maybe even have been used like) past tense markers. But
    they're not really.

I do not equate past tense with perfective, and that's not what I'm 
doing here. I'm insisting on perfective where an action being expressed 
is a completed one. Without the perfective aspect, the action is 
explicitly NOT completed in the utterance. In qunnoq's sentence, the 
promotion isn't ongoing, it isn't occasional, it isn't a general truth, 
it isn't a habit, it isn't regular, it isn't hypothetical; it's COMPLETED.

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name