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

[Will Martin]

SuStel, the lack of tense, but presence of perfective in Klingon is a major stumbling block for humans speaking Klingon, and I respect you for your unusual clarity both in understanding and explaining this bit of Klingon grammar, as well as your patience doing it repeatedly as need arises. 

Sent from my iPad

> On Feb 14, 2021, at 8:43 AM, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:
> 
> 
> 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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