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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 3/31/2022 9:45 AM, mayqel qunen'oS
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAP7F2cKxXdgELgSLEz4tL7W65Pj+h7p6o30Uj90g=JPhX7NbBg@mail.gmail.com">jIH:
<div dir="auto">> ngugh bIpujpu'</div>
<div dir="auto">> DaH bIpuj je</div>
<div dir="auto">SuStel:</div>
<div dir="auto">> The perfective on the first sentence is</div>
<div dir="auto">> wrong. Being weak is a quality, not an</div>
<div dir="auto">> action that is completed. There might be</div>
<div dir="auto">> some unusual situations where being</div>
<div dir="auto">> weak can be described as performed and</div>
<div dir="auto">> completed, but this isn't one of them.</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">I can't understand this. Does this mean that one
can use the perfective {-pu'} only on action verbs, and not on
quality verbs?</div>
</blockquote>
<p>No, it means if you want to describe possessing a quality in the
past, you're describing <i>having</i> that quality, not having
completed having that quality. <b>-pu'</b> doesn't just mean
"it's over now"; it means you're describing an action as a
completed whole. But when you want to say that at a specific time
you had a specific quality, this isn't perfective, it's
imperfective. In that moment, you have the quality <b>puj.</b>
You're not describing anything as a completed whole. I think
you're still confusing past tense with perfective aspect.<br>
</p>
<p>Personally, I think our near-complete lack of quality verbs in
the perfective isn't a coincidence. There isn't a rule against it,
but I can't imagine it being a productive thing to do in any but
the most unusual of circumstances.</p>
<p>I mentioned this on Discord the other day: in Welsh, there
actually <i>is</i> a rule that you cannot put stative verbs (like
<i>hope, think, belong, know</i>) into the preterite tense (which
is basically similar to Klingon's perfective aspect, but only
applies in the past), in a way similar to how English generally
cannot put stative verbs into the present progressive tense. I
think it's entirely possible that a Klingon grammarian would say
that in Klingon you generally cannot put a stative verb (and in
Klingon, "stative" means not only stative verbs like those listed
above, but also quality verbs) into the perfective aspect. No such
rule has been written, and I'm not claiming that anybody has to
follow that rule, but it does make sense.</p>
<p>I think to put a Klingon stative verb into the perfective would
be to alter it from a state to an event. The effect of saying <b>ngugh
bIpujpu'</b> would be like saying "At that time, you weaked."
There might be an unusual circumstance where you might want to say
such a thing, just as there might be an unusual circumstance in
English where you might want to say "I am knowing you," but it's
not standard.<br>
</p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
SuStel
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://trimboli.name">http://trimboli.name</a></pre>
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