[tlhIngan Hol] Perfective with qualities / perfective and perfect

luis.chaparro at web.de luis.chaparro at web.de
Tue Apr 12 09:28:11 PDT 2022


SuStel:

> 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.

Yes, I know. I think I get it!

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

Thank you for the nightmares... But of course, grammatically relevant :-)

> 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.

That has clarified a lot, thank you very much!



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