[tlhIngan Hol] thoughts on the perfective {-pu'}

SuStel sustel at trimboli.name
Tue Apr 5 06:03:11 PDT 2022


On 4/5/2022 8:16 AM, mayqel qunen'oS wrote:
>
> But there's still something I'm wondering. When would it be 
> appropriate for us to put the {-pu'} on a quality verb? Because -if my 
> understanding is correct- I can't think of an occasion when something 
> like this would be needed. So could you write an example where the 
> {-pu'} would be necessary on a quality verb?

I don't think it's a very sensible thing to do, but it might be 
possible. An analogy would be using the English word /know/ in the 
present progressive tense. Normally, one wouldn't say /I am knowing it,/ 
but there might be special circumstances where you would say it. /Aha! 
Now I'm learning it and I'm knowing it!/ Someone might say something 
like this to deliberately make the learning and knowing parallel by 
forcing both into the same tense. You might do something similar with 
Klingon perfective.

Basically, saying things like *jIQuchpu'* and *SuDalpu'* would sound 
like /I happied/ and Y/ou boringed./


> Or perhaps does voragh know of a Ca'Non example where we have the 
> {-pu'} on a quality/stative verb?

The only possibility I'm aware of is *woQ luSuqmeH jIjpu' chaH 
romuluSngan'e' je* from Skybox S26, but this is a bad data point, 
because *jIj* was originally glossed as /cooperate/ and only got the 
further gloss of /be cooperative/ after this card was published. I don't 
automatically take every gloss that starts with /be/ as proving a 
quality verb, so I'm not convinced *jIj *is one.

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name
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