[tlhIngan Hol] Perfective with qualities / perfective and perfect

[Iikka Hauhio]

SuStel:

> Klingon has no suffix that does this. If I saywa'Hu' DungluQ jISoppu',there is no built-in connotation that I ate before noon yesterday and that the eating is relevant to what happened at noon. All this sentence says is that yesterday at noon, I ate, and it's being described as a completed whole from a viewpoint just after the eating stopped. If I saywa'leS DungluQ jISoppu',I'm saying that eating will happen tomorrow at noon, and it's being described as a completed whole from a viewpoint just after the eating stops.

​

Yes.

However, -pu' can be used to tell that the action has already happened relative to the "current time of narration".

jIvem. ram jISoppu', DaH jISopnISbe'. SIbI' yaHwIj vIghoS.
I wake up. I ate at night, I don't need to eat now. I go directly to my workplace.

I'm telling a story using the no-suffix aspect, but in the middle of the story I describe an event that happened before the current time of narration using the perfective aspect.

Iikka "fergusq" Hauhio
------- Original Message -------
On Tuesday, April 12th, 2022 at 19.01, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:

> 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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