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

[Will Martin]

At one point in this post, I slipped and referred to the “perfective tense”. I obviously meant “perfect tense”.

The similarity of the words perfect and perfective make this mistake, and understanding the difference, common.

charghwI’, retired.

> On Feb 28, 2022, at 5:36 PM, Will Martin <willmartin2 at mac.com> wrote:
> 
> SuStel and I are repeatedly explaining to you that there is no map between tenses (perfect or otherwise) and the Klingon perfective aspect, and you keep coming back asking if a certain perfect tense maps to the Klingon perfective aspect.
> 
> Think of an activity as something that has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
> 
> Now, give that activity a time anchor and click the beginning of the activity to the time anchor with {-choH}, or click the middle of the activity to the time anchor with {-taH} or {-lI’} or click the end of the activity (or time after the end of the activity) to the time anchor with {-pu’} or {-ta’}.
> 
> There truly is no tense in Klingon. Tense is wholly replaced by the Time Stamp.
> 
> Languages that have “perfect” tenses are not adding the Klingon perfective aspect to a tense to get the perfective tense. This is what you keep presuming, but it’s a bad model for how the perfective aspect works. It doesn’t work, except randomly, by accident.
> 
> Perfective aspect is fundamentally different from perfect tense. If you don’t recognize that difference, then you don’t understand perfective aspect.
> 
> charghwI’, retired.
> 
>> On Feb 28, 2022, at 1:28 PM, luis.chaparro at web.de wrote:
>> 
>> SuStel:
>> 
>>> I think you misunderstand. The Klingon version set in the future is also a completed whole with no internal structure. wa'leS rep wa'maH loS jISoppu' Tomorrow I will have eaten at 2 pm is describing the eating as a completed whole and is not describing its flow over time.
>> 
>> I understand it, that's clear to me. I'm afraid I'm not being able to express myself correctly in English.
>> 
>>> The Klingon sentence verb jISoppu' refers to an act of eating that is completed and does not have its flow over time detailed, whether the act takes place in the past, present, or future. In English, we can express jISoppu' in the past as I ate, I have eaten, or I had eaten, depending on whether and when the status of having eaten is important; in the present as I have eaten; and in the future as I will have eaten.
>> 
>> That's what I'm trying to say: In the past, you have in English a non-perfect form (*I ate*) and two perfect forms (*I have eaten* and *I had eaten*) to express *jISoppu'*. The non-perfect form doesn't express that the action takes place before another point in time for which the result of the action is relevant. In the future, you only have in English a perfect form (*I will have eaten*), but I was wondering if there could be for the future an interpretation similar to *I ate*, perfective but not perfect, even though this cannot be expressed by English future tenses.
>> _______________________________________________
>> tlhIngan-Hol mailing list
>> tlhIngan-Hol at lists.kli.org
>> http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org