[tlhIngan Hol] Using -ta' during -taHvIS

[De'vID]

On Tue, 26 Feb 2019 at 15:20, Daniel Dadap <daniel at dadap.net> wrote:

> As for the rule resolving possible conflicts in aspect between a verb and
> its object sentence, perhaps that’s the reason, but I don’t see why the
> aspect of a verb taking an SAO and the verb in its SAO have to agree in the
> first place.
>

What do you mean by "agree"? They don't have to be the same (which you seem
to imply), but they can't be incompatible.

In the Chinese equivalent of the SAO construction, aspect on one verb
affects how the other verb is interpreted and what aspect it can take. For
example, if I say "I watch [continuous] him eat [no aspect]", then
(usually) his eating is continuous despite the lack of aspect on that verb.
And you can't say "I watch [continuous] him eat [completed]".

I was thinking that Okrand didn't want to have to deal with the complexity
of this sort of thing when he ruled out having aspect markers on both
verbs. But it seems that he was actually backed into it by having to
backfit a movie line, and maybe didn't think it through. There's no reason
why {moj 'e' wuqta'} (Picard intentionally performed the action of deciding
that Gowron should, as a matter of fact, become Chancellor) or {luDub 'e'
lunIDtaH} (the Duras sisters continually try to improve, in general, their
position) should be impossible, and he evidently forgot that he had ruled
them out.


> If I say (ungrammatically) {wa'leS SIStaH 'e' vI'aqpu'} “I have predicted
> that it will be continuously raining tomorrow”, in both Klingon and English
> the prediction is completed and the raining is continuous, and there
> doesn’t seem to be any reason grounded in laws of nature why the aspect of
> these two verbs must agree.
>

You seem to be using "agree" here to mean "be identical", when performing a
completed action on a continuous one is a *compatible* set of aspects.


> Even with {qama'pu' (vI)jonta' (vI)neH}, there’s no reason the wanting has
> to be completed. {Qugh HoD} could still not-completed-want to capture
> prisoners, even if the opportunity to do so is apparently no longer
> available.
>

Here's how it would work in Chinese (if Chinese were simplified to have the
same set of aspect markers as Klingon):

"I see [no aspect] him hit [completed] the officer" = I witnessed a crime
(a specific event that happened)
"I see [completed] him hit the officer [no aspect]" = I witnessed a trend
(he's a guy who hits the officer, generally speaking)

"I want [no aspect] to capture [completed] prisoners" = I want(ed) to
capture prisoners (there was a specific instance of prisoner-capture that I
want or wanted to happen)
"I want [completed] to capture [no aspect] prisoners" = I used to want to
capture prisoners (in general, maybe as a habit or occupation), but maybe
no longer do

The natural way to express the second of the pairs is apparently illegal in
Klingon. In {qama'pu' vIjonta' vIneH}, though, I don't think the act of
wanting is necessarily completed, but the specific instance of
prisoner-capture is over, and that affects what the wanting means in the
context in which that sentence (or a clipped version of it) was spoken.

If I say {yaS qIppu' 'e' vIlegh}, nothing in the *grammar* says that
{vIlegh} can't mean "I will see [in the future] that...",  but the hitting
of the officer is an event that's over (presumably), so I saw it. In
another context, maybe I really could mean something like "I will see him
hit [completed] the officer in the future", if I'm making a prediction.
Similarly, Kruge was saying he wanted to capture prisoners because that
opportunity was lost. Outside of that specific scene in Star Trek III, if
he had said {qama'pu' vIjonta' vIneH}, he *might* be saying that he
generally wants to have captured prisoners. The explanation in TKD doesn't
go into all the possibilities that sentence could mean in all contexts.
It's just trying to keep things simple.

-- 
De'vID
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