[tlhIngan Hol] Why the half-measure of 'e' neHbe' vavoy?

SuStel sustel at trimboli.name
Sun Feb 14 05:43:10 PST 2021


On 2/14/2021 8:31 AM, mayqel qunen'oS wrote:
> SuStel:
> > You still tend to use -pu' as a tense-
> > marker instead of a perfective-marker. -
> > pu' doesn't mean happened before —
> > that's tense. It means expressed as a
> > completed whole or comes to an end in
> > the moment being described.
>
> I thought that since at the moment when 'a'Serbut says the {'e' neHbe' 
> vavoy} her father is dead, his desire is a completed event, thus the 
> (rule-breaking) perfective on the {neH} of the sao.

She was describing what her father didn't want, not what her father 
finished not wanting. You don't use the perfective suffix because 
something is over now. You use it because you're expressing something as 
completed. If you're expressing something as it existed in the past, 
that's not expressing it as completed.

*wa'Hu' jIQuch.*/Yesterday, I was happy./

I'm not going to use the perfective here because I'm describing my state 
as it existed yesterday, not the ending of my happiness.

*bIpawpu'DI', qagh vIneH.*/When you arrived, I wanted gagh./

I'm describing your arrival as completed: you're standing before me. I'm 
describing my desire without the perfective, because my desire is not 
completed when you arrive.

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name

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