[tlhIngan Hol] {ghIq} {ngugh} and time adverbs with time stamps

[Will Martin]

You ignore the obvious option of using two sentences:

Monday, we acquired the ship. Tuesday, the war started.

The time stamps imply the sequence obviously enough. Okrand has clearly stated that in many cases one sentence in English would be split up into two or more sentences in Klingon.

If you really need “then”, then:

Monday, we acquired the ship. Tuesday, then the war started.

Meanwhile, I don’t need “then”. The “and then” sequence phrase you want is primarily useful to sequence two things that occur within the same boundaries of duration used by the sentence, as in “Monday, we acquired the ship and then the war started.” Both happened on Monday, but we acquired the ship before the war started.

All events require duration. There is no point in time outside our abstract imagination. Time stamps in language often make these boundaries vague and that’s not a problem because a lot of things in language are vague. If it is specific enough to be functional, it’s good to go. If you demand extreme specificity, you have to go to great, intentional lengths to exclude anything outside of the boundaries you seek to focus within.

So, what is a sentence? “A complete thought”. That’s the mother of all vague sentences.

Consider that in Klingon, a time stamp is the time boundary FOR THE ENTIRE SENTENCE. Everything in the sentence is anchored to that one time stamp. Grammatical devices exist to have something specified as before the anchor or during the anchor or after the anchor, but you don’t have two anchors in one sentence. When you say something about Monday and you say something about Tuesday, you use two sentences.

-charghwI’ ‘utlh

> On Oct 29, 2021, at 8:19 AM, mayqel qunen'oS <mihkoun at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> God saideth in the holy scripture of tkd:
> 
> -----words of god starteth-----
> 
> It was earlier thought that all adverbials (except {neH} <only>) come
> at the beginning of the sentence. This is frequently the case, but
> what is really going on is that the adverbial precedes the
> object-verb-subject construction. It is possible for an element of
> another type to precede the adverb. Most commonly, this is a time
> element (a noun or phrase meaning <today, at six o'clock,> etc.).
> 
> {DaHjaj nom Soppu'} <Today they ate quickly>
> 
> -----words of god endeth-----
> 
> And perhaps because of this tkd quote, we place time stamps at the
> beginning of the sentence, i.e. before any of the adverbs. But this
> creates the "problem" of where to place an adverb which has a "time
> stamp" flavor such as {ghIq}/{ngugh}. In the tkd example god used the
> {nom}, and there's nothing "off" in saying "today they ate quickly",
> or "today quickly they ate".
> 
> But what if we wanted to say "On Monday we acquired the ship, and then
> on Tuesday the war started"?
> 
> The logical thing to write is {DaSjaj Duj wISuqpu', 'ej ghIq povjaj
> taghpu' noH}; but this creates the problem of placing the adverb
> before the time stamp.
> 
> Seemingly/apparently we need to write {DaSjaj Duj wISuqpu', 'ej povjaj
> ghIq taghpu' noH}; but there's something ugly in hearing "and on
> Tuesday, then the war started".
> 
> So there are two options..
> 
> Option A: Flush the words of god down the toilet, thus writing {ghIq
> povjaj taghpu' noH}.
> 
> Option B: Placing a parenthetical time stamp in the following way:
> {ghIq -povjaj- taghpu' noH}.
> 
> Of course someone can say that using the {ghIq} is redundant to begin
> with, and there's no problem with just saying {DaSjaj Duj wISuqpu',
> 'ej povjaj taghpu' noH}.
> 
> But the problem (ok, *my* problem), isn't how to express the desired
> meaning; it's rather finding out the order in which one should place
> time stamps and "time adverbs" together.
> 
> --
> Dana'an
> https://sacredtextsinklingon.wordpress.com/
> Ζεὺς ἦν, Ζεὺς ἐστίν, Ζεὺς ἔσσεται· ὦ μεγάλε Ζεῦ
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