[tlhIngan Hol] thoughts on the perfective {-pu'}

Wed Apr 6 05:44:36 PDT 2022

De'vID:

> What you wrote was "a verb describing a state". This has a specific meaning in TKD. Verbs describing a state or quality behave differently than states describing actions.
>
> You're equivocating between different meanings of words like "state" and "event" to make your case. Those words have specific meanings in the context of linguistics.

You misunderstood me. "Stative verb" is a term used in linguistics, not specific to Klingon. SuStel has previously used this term a lot (see for example Discord #language-chat 26.3.), and I'm using it similarly in this discussion.

My point is not to discuss the grammar but the semantics. Semantically verbs like neH and ghung are stative as they both describe a state instead of an action. This has nothing to do with the syntax of Klingon, where certain words can modify nouns and certain words cannot. That is an entirely separate classification that is not based on the meanings of the words but their grammar.

> It doesn't matter that you don't think {neH} is an action. TKD literally uses {vIneHpu'} as an example to illustrate "an action is completed". Whatever the colloquial meaning of the word "action" is, {neH} is an action when we're talking about Klingon linguistics.

Yes, neH is an "action" in the sense that you can use perfective aspect with it. So while semantically stative, it can be syntactically an action. This is my main argument: stative verbs can be in the perfective aspect meaningfully.

> If Okrand had wanted to be weird, he could've defined {ghung} to be "hunger" and {'oj} as "thirst", and they'd have been action verbs in Klingon (like {Qong} is), regardless of the fact that the corresponding verbs in English are states.

Here you are again confusing the semantic and syntactic viewpoints. Okrand is notoriously unclear when writting glosses. I think that the reason why some verbs are glossed as "be+adjective" and some not is to make sure the reader knows which words are syntactically quality verbs, ie. which verbs can modify nouns. If this is true, the glosses tell us nothing certain about the semantics of those words.

Both I and SuStel have many times said that we don't think that it is syntactically forbidden to add -pu'to a quality verb (compare to eg. adding aspect to a verb that has 'e' as object: that is syntactically forbidden even when it makes sense). What we are discussing here is whether using perfective aspect is meaningful. Therefore, it doesn't matter what syntactic feature the words we discuss have.

Iikka "fergusq" Hauhio
------- Original Message -------
On Wednesday, April 6th, 2022 at 14.00, De'vID <de.vid.jonpin at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, 6 Apr 2022 at 09:48, Iikka Hauhio <fergusq at protonmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> It is? It seems pretty clear to me that {neH} is an action and not a state (in the senses of these words as used in TKD). {vIneHpu'} is even used as an example for {-pu'}, right after it's explained that the suffix indicates that "an action is completed". (A verb expressing a state can be used as an adjective following a noun, whereas {neH} clearly can't.)
>>
>> I'm not sayin gthat neH is a quality verb. I'm saying I think it's a stative verb. The English want is a so called stative verb.
>
> What you wrote was "a verb describing a state". This has a specific meaning in TKD. Verbs describing a state or quality behave differently than states describing actions.
>
> You're equivocating between different meanings of words like "state" and "event" to make your case. Those words have specific meanings in the context of linguistics.
>
> In Klingon, {neH} is an action, whereas {rop} is a state or quality. This is pretty clear from TKD. It does not matter that "want" is a "stative verb" in English or that being sick is a biological "event". That's not what those words mean in this context.
>
>> jIvem, jISay'eghmoH, Soj vIneH, vaj jISop. yaH vIghoS.
>>
>> Here vem, Say'moH, Sop and ghoS are actions that happen in an order: first I wake up, then I wash myself, then I eat, then I go to the duty station. But I don't think neH is an action. I don't first do a wanting-action and then eat. Wanting food is a state I have before eating, but I probably wanted to eat before washing myself too.
>
> It doesn't matter that you don't think {neH} is an action. TKD literally uses {vIneHpu'} as an example to illustrate "an action is completed". Whatever the colloquial meaning of the word "action" is, {neH} is an action when we're talking about Klingon linguistics.
>
>> Same goes for quality verbs:
>>
>> jIvem, jISay'eghmoH, jIghung, vaj jISop. yaH vIghoS.
>>
>> Being hungry is a state I have before eating, not an action.
>
> That may be true, but irrelevant. {ghung} is a verb expressing a state or quality in Klingon, whether or not being hungry is a "state" in a biological sense. If Okrand had wanted to be weird, he could've defined {ghung} to be "hunger" and {'oj} as "thirst", and they'd have been action verbs in Klingon (like {Qong} is), regardless of the fact that the corresponding verbs in English are states.
>
>> I do agree that these verbs aren't actions as such. But if we apply perfective to them, I think we can force them to describe events by compressing the state to a single point in the timeline. For example:
>>
>> Hogh vorgh jIrop. Last week I was sick.
>> Hogh vorgh jIroppu'. Last week I had an illness.
>>
>> I think by adding -pu', I can make it an event. In my opinion, this is useful and meaningful.
>
> Going by what's in TKD, which says that {-pu'} indicates "an action is completed", {jIroppu'} does not mean what you think it means. It means "The action of the quality of my being sick is completed", which is self-contradictory because a quality is not an action (or event).
>
> Quoting SuStel: "But what this says isn't that during last week I had the quality of being sick. It says that at some point during last week I experienced the event of being sick, and that the entire event is described in that one sentence. But it remains undemonstrated to me that Klingon allows being sick to be an event, and your simply declaring it so doesn't provide any evidence."
>
> You've just declared "I can make it an event", but how? Klingon verbs can be classified as expressing states or qualities ("be" verbs) and expressing actions or activities (and maybe some are both). You've simply *declared* that you can turn one into the other, but what is it (what is the rule or linguistic procedure or whatever) that allows you to do it? We have known means of doing so involving suffixes like {-choH} and {-moH}, but there's no evidence that "be" verbs can be turned into actions without such modifications. You can't simply declare that you can do this, any more than you can declare that one can turn a noun into a verb by putting verb prefixes on it (*{DIp vIwotpu'!}). It might turn out that what you claim is possible, but if so, there's no evidence that it can be done and the result doesn't make sense, so people are naturally pushing back on it.
>
> --
>
> De'vID
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