[88251] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: jISIv
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Krenath)
Tue Sep 14 10:01:02 2010
From: Krenath <krenath@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <8C9627A3-5362-4476-9BC2-2FE1E0DC1DFA@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 09:52:56 -0400
To: "tlhingan-hol@kli.org" <tlhingan-hol@kli.org>
Errors-to: tlhingan-hol-bounce@kli.org
Reply-to: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
What do you mean by 'timestamp'?
The last thing I think of when I think of a 'timestamp' is anything relative.
A timestamp is absolute. (Midnight, 4pm, January 3rd 478AD)
A timespan is relative. (yesterday, 5 minutes ago, next week)
Of course, I'm more a software developer than a linguist...
On Sep 14, 2010, at 7:01 AM, "lojmIt tI'wI' nuv" <lojmitti7wi7nuv@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think of time stamps as either being absolute (like midnight) or relative TO NOW (like tomorrow). I don't think that a time stamp is the right grammatical structure to talk about the length of a span of time between two events, neither of which is now.
>
> My suggestion {qaSpu'mo' tup 'ar jIpaS?} translates to "I will be late because how many minutes have happened?" Is it really that obtuse? You seem fixated on using a time stamp here. You really can talk about time without always having to use it as a time stamp.
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Sep 14, 2010, at 1:51 AM, R Fenwick <qeslagh@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> ghItlhpu' lojmIt tI'wI' nuv:
>>> Today, I thought I might be late. I said to myself, "How late will I be?"
>>> I considered how I would say that in Klingon.
>>
>> jIjatlh jIH:
>>
>> chaq jIpaS. tup/rep/jaj 'ar pIq jIpaw?
>> I may be late. How many minutes/hours/days in the future will I arrive?
>>
>> taH:
>>> I rejected {'ar jIpaS} because, though an English speaker would understand
>>> it, grammatically, I've only seen {'ar} used adjectivally, not adverbially.
>>> It might make sense as {tup 'ar jIpaS}, though that is, itself, an odd
>>> grammatical construction, as would be {tup 'ar vIpaS}.
>>
>> Not if {tup 'ar} is acting as a time stamp, though {tup 'ar jIpaS} would be
>> more like "For how many minutes will I be late?", which doesn't work for me.
>> It implies that you will stop being late after a certain number of minutes,
>> which simply can't happen: even after you arrive ten minutes late, you are
>> still late.
>>
>>> One has no grammatical connection between {tup} and the verb.
>>
>> There's never an overt grammatical connection between a time stamp noun and
>> the main verb of the clause it modifies.
>>
>>> I could even stretch it to {qaSpu'mo' tup 'ar jIpaS?} It's a little awkward,
>>> but it carries the meaning clearly enough.
>>
>> Not really; taking the sentence on its face, I can't get to "How late will I
>> be?" from it. "Because it has happened, how many minutes will I be late for?"
>> I can't wrap my head around it.
>>
>>> So, I thought the best way might be simply to say, {tugh jIpaSqu' 'e' vISIv}.
>>
>> pabbej. "I wonder if I will soon be very late." Is there a need to specify by
>> how much time you were going to be late?
>>
>> QeS 'utlh
>>
>>
>
>
>
