[tlhIngan Hol] perfective {-pu'} using/combining aspect with no aspect

Iikka Hauhio fergusq at protonmail.com
Thu Apr 7 07:07:06 PDT 2022


SuStel:

> A brief glance through canon doesn't bring any quality verbs with-DI'to my attention, with one exception that doesn't really count.

​

Through my corpus search I found these examples:

paq'batlh:

> chu'DI' maS 'ej qaStaHvIS ram
> nuHmeyDaj may'luchDaj nIv je
> yIr qeylIS

​

TKW:

> wa' Dol nIvDaq matay'DI' maQap.

​

PK:

> matay'DI', vIHtaHbogh bIQ rur mu'qaDmey.
> DopDaq qul yIchenmoH QobDI' ghu'.

​

Iikka "fergusq" Hauhio
------- Original Message -------
On Thursday, April 7th, 2022 at 16.51, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:

> On 4/7/2022 9:18 AM, Iikka Hauhio wrote:
>
>> Dana'an:
>>
>>> Suppose I say: {wa'Hu' jIghungDI', pItSa' vIvunpu'}, for "yesterday, as soon as I was hungry, I ordered a pizza".
>>> I'm asking this because I understand the klingon as "yesterday, as soon as I'm hungry, I have ordered a pizza", meaning that I "feel" it very close to "yesterday, as soon as I'm hungry, I've (already) ordered a pizza".
>>
>>>>
>> Perhaps you could say
>>
>> wa'Hu' jIghungchoHDI', wejHa' pItSa' vIvunpu'.
>>
>> to make clear that you have ordered the pizza as of becoming hungry.
>
> Yes, the issue here is that -DI' on verbs expressing qualities often makes little sense, because "as soon as" implies that something happens as soon as the expressed change occurs. jIghungDI' doesn't express a change of state; it only expresses a state, so there's nothing "as soon as" about it. jIghungchoHDI' solves this problem.
>
> A brief glance through canon doesn't bring any quality verbs with -DI' to my attention, with one exception that doesn't really count. (paq'batlh has rInDI' as soon as it is finished, but the verb rIn itself already implies a change of state to a completion, so it's not a good example.) One wonders if Q-DI' is another semantically non-sensible combination in Klingon.
>
> The other issue here is that -DI' doesn't mean "as soon as the action expressed is finished." vIHoHDI' doesn't mean that something happens as soon as he is dead; it means, basically, at the same moment that I kill him. If you want to describe something that occurs upon the completion of the killing, rather than simultaneously with the killing, you'd need to say vIHoHpu'DI'.
>
> So for instance:
>
> jaghwI' vIHoHDI', qabDajDaq jItuy'. When I kill my enemy, I spit on his face.
> and
> jaghwI' vIHoHpu'DI', tajwIj vISay'moH. When I have killed my enemy, I clean my knife.
>
> In the first sentence, I stab my enemy and, as he stares at me with bulging eyes, I spit on his face. In the second sentence, I stab my enemy, then he drops to the ground and dies, and then I clean my knife.
>
> So if we have wa'Hu' jIghungchoHDI', pItSa' vIvunpu', we're saying that at the moment yesterday that I went from not hungry to hungry, I ordered a pizza. Again, "moment" in this context doesn't necessarily mean "instant"; these two events just happen approximately simultaneously from a human, rather than a precise, perspective. -DI' doesn't imply precise simultaneity, just a reasonable approximation. Hey, my stomach is starting to rumble. Hand me the phone.
>
> --
> SuStel
> http://trimboli.name
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