[247] in tlhIngan-Hol
Not From the Grammarian's Desk
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Thu Mar 26 01:45:19 1992
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
From: Allan C. Wechsler <ACW@YUKON.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1992 17:12-0500
In-Reply-To: <9203241811.AA01532@startide.ctr.columbia.edu>
Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1992 13:11 EST
From: Mark E. Shoulson <shoulson@ctr.columbia.edu>
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
Oh, hey, wait a sec, far be it from me, Mr. Grammarian, Sir, uh...
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.
My Hebrew is weak: is this the paradigm that starts <'adaber>,
<tedaber>,...? Anyhow, I'm willing to buy this explanation of
<jIghItlhtaH> to mean "I'll be writing".
I'm now wondering about your use of <leSHey> in the same message.
The meaning was supposed to be, "a few days from now, number not exactly
specified", right? This is tempting, given the seeming absence of other
words for an indefinite number of something. But all the examples we
have of <N-Hey> mean "something that seems to the speaker to be an N,
although there is room for doubt". The noun <leS> "days from now" was
clearly invented for the purpose of saying things like <Soch leS> "seven
days from now". But I'm worried lest <leSHey> come out meaning
something like "things that appear to be days-from-now, but might
actually be hours-from-now, or perhaps whales".
I'd be more comfortable with something like <leS puS>.
