[tlhIngan Hol] Using -ta' during -taHvIS

[Daniel Dadap]

> On Feb 25, 2019, at 20:35, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:
> 
> Damn. I lost the whole message I had written in response to this. I'll give you the slightly shorter version.

HIvqa' QIn Sopchu'wI'. Thanks for taking the time to write all of that twice. It was very helpful.

> if you can leave off a type 7 suffix whenever you want, what is the point of the text that says it's "usually" needed?

Splitting hairs here, but it doesn’t actually say it’s “usually needed”. It says that verbs without aspect markers are “usually … not completed and … not continuous”. It’s the leap from reading that to saying that it means that not using an aspect suffix when a verb describes a completed or continuous action is wrong (or “usually” wrong) that I’m struggling with.

I think part of my resistance to fully embracing aspect markers as non-optional (don’t get me wrong, I do think you’re likely right that they’re not optional) comes from my own personal philosophical attraction to the idea of Klingon generally communicating the needed information, and not more and not less. My own take on aspect markers had been similar to what charghwI' was describing: that the suffixes could be omitted if it wasn’t important for the purposes of the particular utterance at hand to indicate aspect. Clipped Klingon certainly makes even verb prefixes optional, so I’d imagine that at least Clipped Klingon would be another exception to the “usually”.

> As for Duolingo, it carries no especial "correctness."

Sure, I meant only to highlight the Duolingo course as an example of a place where I frequently encountered verbs without aspect markers that indicated completed actions. Didn’t mean to imply that the usage on Duolingo was evidence of that usage being correct, or that Duolingo was incorrect for using verbs that way. Your information on the interpretation of aspect changing over the years was enlightening; I think that more than anything explains the spectrum of different ways I’ve seen people using the aspect markers.