[tlhIngan Hol] Perfective with qualities / perfective and perfect

SuStel sustel at trimboli.name
Tue Apr 12 09:01:57 PDT 2022


On 4/12/2022 11:45 AM, luis.chaparro at web.de wrote:
> SuStel:
>
>> ja'chuqghach a telling to each other
>> ja'chuqtaHghach an ongoing telling to each other
> Ok, but for verbs without suffix we don't have this difference. I mean, the only way to say *the eating* is saying *the ongoing eating* (*SoptaHghach*), right?

*SoptaHghach* means something different than *Sopghach.* While 
*Sopghach* is not technically a grammatical term, Okrand explains that 
you might use such a word temporarily if it made a technical point, with 
a wink to its ungrammaticality.

How to say /the eating/ depends on what you mean. A competed act of 
eating? *Soppu'ghach.* An ongoing act of eating? *SoptaHghach.* The 
beginning of the eating? *SopchoHghach.* And generally, *-ghach* is more 
often used for technical discussions; usually instead of saying 
something like *nI' SoptaHghach*/the ongoing eating was long,/ you'd say 
something like *SoptaH chaH qaStaHvIS poH nI'*/they were eating for a 
long time./

And, of course, we can also say *Sopchuqghach* /the eating of each other.../

>> If you want the "past event relevant to the named time" stuff in Klingon, then you have to say it explicitly. wa'Hu' DungluQ jISoppu', pov vaj pe'vIl jISuvpu' I ate at noon yesterday, so in the afternoon I fought forcefully. I named the time context for each verb to clearly set their temporal order and used vaj to show that the one led to the other.
> But then, we should do the same for the future, shouldn't we? If we want the *past event relevant to the named time* stuff, we have to say it explicitly. Just saying *wa'leS DungluQ jISoppu'*, without any further context, wouldn't have the connotation of perfect that the English *Tomorrow at noon I will have eaten* has.

Right. /Tomorrow at noon I will have eaten/ is close to the meaning of 
the Klingon, but it's not exact. You might say *wa'leS DungluQ jISoppu', 
pov vaj pe'vIl jISuvpu'*/Tomorrow at noon I will have eaten, so in the 
afternoon I will have fought forcefully./ English doesn't let me say 
this without the future perfect tense. If I could borrow the simple past 
tense, I could say /Tomorrow at noon I ate, so in the afternoon 
(tomorrow) I fought forcefully./ But we can't say that in English.

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name
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