[tlhIngan Hol] Time elements and *qaStaHvIS*, continuous and perfective aspect

luis.chaparro at web.de luis.chaparro at web.de
Sun Feb 20 05:12:16 PST 2022


In my last text I wrote: *poH nI' bov chep wISIQpu' 'ewropngan* (I've changed *yIn* for *SIQ* following the recommendations). I have a few questions:

1. Thinking about this sentence, I wasn't sure if I should have said: *qaStaHvIS poH nI'*. I don't think so, because if I understand it correctly, *poH nI'* acts as a time element, just like *DaHjaj*, *Hoghvam*, *cha' ben*, *rep cha'* or *jar cha' DIS 2022*. All these elements don't need *qaStaHvIS*, right?

2. Since *poH nI'* expresses itself a duration, I'm not sure if there is any difference between *poH nI'* and *qaStaHvIS poH nI'*. When should I use the latter, if ever?

3. In Spanish and German, and probably in English too, there is a difference between *this week* and *during this week*. I would use *during this week* if I wanted to speak about something that happened all the time or several times among this week, but not if I only wanted to situate an singular event in the timeline (e.g. I wouldn't say *During this week I've eaten pizza* if I only ate it once and I just wanted to say when I did it). Could we render this difference in Klingon using *qaStaHvIS Hoghvam* instead of just *Hoghvam*? Or has it nothing to do with this?

4. All of this led me to a question I've wanted to ask for a long time. In Spanish (and in English I think) we can say something like: *It had been raining all day*, *It has been raining all day* / *It was raining all day*, *It will have been raining all day* expressing a continuous *and* perfective action. Since aspect suffixes belong to the same type in Klingon, how could I express this? Simply by not expressing the continuous aspect, for example?

Thank you!



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