On Tue, 26 Feb 2019 at 15:20, Daniel Dadap <daniel@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