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<p>Okay, I put a lot of work into this, so please do read it
carefully.<br>
</p>
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 10/6/2020 10:07 AM, Will Martin
wrote:<br>
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<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:128DB8CF-54D2-4441-9034-5984C7A65BB5@mac.com">
<div class="">One would think that by now, I’d have the perfective
down.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">I’m not trying to argue here. I trust your
understanding of the perfective and want your advice to steer me
away from my thinking. I was starting with “Because I had been
hungry, I ordered pizza.” The ordering was simple past, so not
perfective. The hunger, within the time setting of ordering the
pizza, was a level farther into the past.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">To some extent, both the ordering of the pizza and
my hunger are now complete, since I ordered and ate the pizza.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">Please clarify. I tend to renew my understanding of
the perfective after your explanations and I thank you in
advance.</div>
</blockquote>
<p>You do not understand that perfective is not the same as perfect.</p>
<p>English has a lot of tenses. Here are a few relevant ones.</p>
<p><i>I order pizza.</i> Simple present tense.<br>
<i>I have ordered pizza.</i> Present perfect tense.<br>
<i>I ordered pizza.</i> Simple past tense.<br>
<i>I had ordered pizza.</i> Past perfect tense, also called
pluperfect.<i><br>
I will order pizza.</i> Simple future tense.<br>
<i>I will have ordered pizza.</i> Future perfect tense.<br>
</p>
<p>The simple tenses tell you which direction in time from the
moment of speaking the action takes place.<i><br>
</i></p>
<p><i>I order pizza.</i> Simple present tense. The ordering happens
as I say this sentence.<br>
<i>I ordered pizza.</i> Simple past tense. The ordering happened
before I said this sentence.<br>
<i>I will order pizza.</i> Simple future tense. The order will
happen after I say this sentence.</p>
<p>The perfect tenses tell you which direction in time relative to a
reference event the action takes place.</p>
<p><i>By 3:00, I had ordered pizza.</i> Pluperfect. The order
happened before 3:00, which was before now.<br>
<i>By 3:00, I will have ordered pizza.</i> Future perfect. The
order will happen before 3:00, which has not happened yet.</p>
<p>Sometimes the moment of speaking and the reference event are the
same moment.</p>
<p><i>Now I have ordered pizza.</i> Present perfect. The reference
event <i>now</i> is the same as the moment of speaking, and the
order happened before now.</p>
<p>What's true for all of these is that the tense tells you in which
direction of time the event occurs relative to some other event.
This is the function of tense.</p>
<p>Aspect, on the other hand, doesn't tell you in which direction of
time an event occurs. Aspect tells you the shape of an event. It
tells you how the event occurred and how you're looking at it.
Aspect tells you things like whether an action is unchanging or
continuous or instantaneous or having an abrupt start or having an
abrupt ending or being repetitive or being habitual or being
timeless. It doesn't tell you WHEN the action happened, just HOW
it happened and how YOU are viewing it.</p>
<p>It is VERY IMPORTANT at this point to keep firmly in your mind
that aspect does note tell you ANYTHING about which direction in
time an event is relative to now or a reference point.<br>
</p>
<p>Klingon has four aspect suffixes. One of these is <b>-pu'.<i> </i></b>It
means <i>perfective.</i> It means the action has a specific
shape: it is a completed action, and you are viewing it from a
point after it is completed. It is an action described as having
an end point, and it is being viewed from after that endpoint has
been reached. (Notice that your VIEWPOINT is not the same as NOW
or even a reference event. It is simply imagining yourself at a
point on the timeline after the event such that you can look back
at it and see that it is completed.)</p>
<p><b>pItSa' chab vIvunpu'.</b><i> </i>An order of pizza takes
place. I am placing the listener at a viewpoint just after the
order, where we can see that the order was completed. This
sentence doesn't say ANYTHING WHATSOEVER about when the order
takes place or whether it happens before or after now. There is no
reference event. It is completely impossible to place this
isolated sentence on a timeline.<br>
</p>
<p><b>jIghungpu'.</b> This describes my state of hunger. I am
placing the listener at a viewpoint after my hunger is over, to
look back in time to see my hunger come to an end. This sentence
also says absolutely nothing about whether this hunger occurs
before, simultaneously with, or after now, and there is no
reference event. It is completely impossible to place this
isolated sentence on a timeline.</p>
<p>Now remember that old chestnut of TKD: "The absence of a Type 7
suffix usually means that the action is not completed and is not
continuous (that is, it is not one of the things indicated by the
Type 7 suffixes)." "Usually" in this context does not mean "you
can ignore this rule whenever you want." It means there are times
when your desire to use a type 7 suffix is blocked by some other
rule, like how you can't use a type 7 suffix on the second verb of
a sentence-as-object construction. Apply the rule to these
sentences:</p>
<p><b>pItSa' chab vIvun.</b> An order of pizza takes place. The
action described cannot be considered to be viewed from after its
completion, and it cannot be considered to be viewed from deep
inside without seeing the endpoints (the meaning of continuous,
which I won't get into here). What kinds of actions might such a
sentence describe? Well, the action could be happening
simultaneously with the viewpoint. It hasn't finished yet. Or our
viewpoint might be situated before the action even starts, placing
the action in the future of the viewpoint. Or the action might be
timeless, not occurring at any given time, but just being
generally true. Or the action might be something I do over and
over again, making it impossible to place a given viewpoint
anywhere that would identify the action as completed. All of these
are valid uses of this sentence, and given the right context, you
should be able to figure out which one I mean.</p>
<p>Now go back to English. How would you describe ordering a pizza
earlier in the day, at 3:00?</p>
<p><i>At 3:00 this afternoon, I ordered pizza.</i></p>
<p>Here, we use the simple past tense to describe the action as
BEFORE NOW. The reference time pegs when that was, but the tense
just tells us it's before now. Now here's the good bit. THIS
ACTION IS PERFECTIVE. English doesn't mark verbs for perfective
and doesn't have a tense corresponding to it. But you can work out
the details. This is a single instance of ordering a pizza, so
it's not something habitual or repetitive or general. It happens
exactly once: at 3:00 this afternoon. It's not happening
simultaneously with or after the viewpoint of the listener —
remember, the viewpoint is not the same as the reference event —
because it's impossible to follow that sentence with anything
except what happened AFTER the order (or to suddenly jump the
viewpoint back in time). This is a perfective sentence, even
though English does not mark its sentences for perfective.</p>
<p>For us English speakers, it takes a lot of work to recognize
perfective. It's not natural for us. Our tenses are complex and
subtle and difficult for non-natives to learn, but they don't
match the way Klingon works. Klingon tense is purely contextual.
Klingon aspect doesn't line up with any English grammar. TKD
claims it will TRANSLATE Klingon perfective with English present
perfect tense, but it only does so about half the time. The other
half it's simple past tense. But even future perfect tense is a
possible translation for perfective: <b>DaHjaj ram pItSa' chab
vIvunpu'</b><i> Tonight I will have ordered pizza.</i> Viewpoint
is looking back on the completed order; both the viewpoint and the
order take place at the reference time, tonight. Now is before
tonight.</p>
<p>And I think you'll find that understanding perfective this way
will match up perfectly with canon.<br>
</p>
<p>So, any questions? Do you see that Klingon perfective does not
mean "prior to the time context"? It is not equal to English
perfect tenses?<br>
</p>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
SuStel
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