[tlhIngan Hol] {je} "too" applying to the adverb

[SuStel]

On 4/1/2022 2:48 PM, Will Martin wrote:
> When I read the end of this, I thought {ngugh bIpujpu’} could mean 
> something close to {ngugh bIpujHa’choH} before realizing, nope. That’s 
> what {bIpujHa’choH} is for. If you had previously been weak and that 
> status became “complete”, as in, you are done with it, then you are 
> undoing being weak, and the change is worth noting with {-choH}. Using 
> {-pu’} instead would be weird enough to consider wrong.

*-pu'* does imply that some change occurred somewhere, somewhen, but the 
whole point of perfective is that you're not witness to the internal 
flow of the action expressed. You're told that it happened in its 
entirety, but you're not told anything about how it changed or flowed 
through time. That's what perfective means, and in Klingon, perfective 
implies a completed action. Not "the action became complete," just "a 
completed action." Understand the difference between these two, and you 
understand Klingon perfective.

Let's take an obviously active verb to avoid any questions of meaning. 
If I say *wa'Hu' jIqetpu'*/I ran yesterday,/ I am naming myself as the 
performer of *qet,* I am identifying yesterday as the point on the 
timeline that *qet* occurs, and I am saying that *qet* was performed in 
its entirety. That doesn't mean I necessarily got to where I was going 
or that I didn't trip along the way or anything; it just means I 
performed a whole action of *qet.*

Importantly, it does NOT express the idea that *jIqetchoH*/I began to 
run,/ *jIqettaH*/I continued to run,/ or *jIqetbe'choH*/I stopped 
running./ Those views of this one action have zoomed in to certain... 
ahem... "aspects" of the action to look how they flow over time. 
*jIqetchoH* zooms in to the start of the running and expresses it as a 
change of state from not running to running. *jIqettaH* zooms in to the 
middle of the running and expresses it as a moment before which the 
running was already happening and after which the running will still be 
happening. *jIqetbe'choH* zooms in to the end of the running and 
expresses it as a change of state from running to not running.

It's this zooming in that *-pu'* absolutely prohibits. By definition, 
perfective is that aspect in which the flow of time of an action is 
compressed into a single, featureless point. You can't zoom in to it to 
examine its parts. Perfective exists precisely to enable describing 
actions in this way. It doesn't describe "coming to an end"... that 
would be zooming in to the ending to examine it.

(And TKD tells us that, in general, leaving off an aspect suffix means a 
verb is neither continuous nor perfective. If I don't include any 
"zooming" on the verb, if I just say *jIqet*/I ran,/ it is neither 
zooming in on any part of the running nor zooming out to compress the 
running into a single dot on the timeline. It is a formless fact. It 
might be timelessly true or habitual that I used to run, but without a 
specific time in which to describe me doing it it can't be put on the 
timeline. Or it might mean that I'm excluding the entire timeline from 
my view, able to perceive only the single point that is the current 
moment, which moment moves along with me as I tell the story.)

So now try to apply this to a quality verb. If I say *ngugh bIpujpu',* 
I'm picking out a specific point on the timeline, /that time,/ and 
saying that at that time there's a dot that represents your being weak. 
It's not that you were weak for only a moment; it's that you've zoomed 
out from an act of being weak and can't view its internal structure. 
This is not a state; it's an action. If your "dots" on the timeline 
represent big enough periods of time, you MIGHT get away with expressing 
being weak as an action performed rather than a state experienced, but 
it would be an unusual thing to do.


> And if you wanted to interpret {bIpujpu’} the OTHER way, to say, 
> “You’ve been working your way toward becoming weak and now the process 
> is complete,” that doesn’t work because the state of weakness is not 
> finished, assuming that you are still weak. That’s more like 
> {bIpujchoHchu’} or {bIpujchoHbej}, depending on the quality/threshold 
> of weakness you are going for.

Yes, *-pu'* does not include the concept of *-chu'.* It doesn't imply 
that anything was done correctly or completely, just that the action is 
being viewed as a "completed" whole.


> Or maybe {bIpujchoHpu’} could mean that you’ve been becoming weak, and 
> you are no longer becoming weak. You just ARE weak. The beginning of 
> your weakness is complete.

*bIpujchoHpu'* describes an act of changing state from not weak to weak. 
It is this act of changing state that is being described, not the 
weakness itself. We've zoomed out from the act, unable to see it flow 
over time. We can assume the being weak goes on, but the being weak 
isn't described here; the change is.

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name
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