[243] in tlhIngan-Hol
From the Grammarian's Desk
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Tue Mar 24 14:25:28 1992
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
From: Mark E. Shoulson <shoulson@ctr.columbia.edu>
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Date: Tue, 24 Mar 92 13:11:33 -0500
In-Reply-To: Allan C. Wechsler's message of Mon, 23 Mar 1992 17:39-0500 <199203
Well, after over 2wks of failed sendings of a colors response which covers
no new ground, I'm going to try yet another mail-path. Maybe this one...
Allan takes Krankor to task for failing to take me to task for my use of
<jIghitlhtaH>:
> leSHey DochvamDaq jIghItlhtaH.
> [Krankor's discussion of leSHey and -Daq...]
>I confess surprise that the pabpo' did not flag the word <jIghitlhtaH>
>itself. <ghitlhtaH> ought not mean "continue writing" but rather just
>"be writing". The misuse (in my opinion -- I'd like a ruling from the
>pabpo') comes from a misunderstanding on the writer's part of the word
>"continuous" (sec. 4.2.7). The writer focussed on the word "continue",
>and assumed that he could express "continuing" in the sense of
>"resuming". Now, there already is a position 3 suffix that means
>"resume V-ing" -- it's <-qa'>. Wouldn't <jIghitlhqa'> be more correct
>than <jIghitlhtaH>?
No, I think you misunderstood me. I'll grant that <jIghItlhqa'> would
indeed be better for the meaning *you* are assigning to what I wrote (and
perhaps that meaning would have been more fitting), but I did *not* mean
the "-taH" to indicate "continue" in the English sense. "-taH" is an
imperfective; it indicates that the action is not completed. Thus, it is
legitimate to use it as a future (though, of course, it it not required,
since unmarked verbs are tenseless). For comparison, I'm told that the
modern Hebrew future tense was originally an imperfective, doing
double-duty with future sense. I believe a similar situation exists in
Arabic.
Hope this makes it through, most annoying if I couldn't even answer the
criticisms! :-)
~mark
