De'vID:
What you wrote was "a verb describing a state". This has a specific meaning in TKD. Verbs describing a state or quality behave differently than states describing actions.
You're equivocating between different meanings of words like "state" and "event" to make your case. Those words have specific meanings in the context of linguistics.
You misunderstood me. "Stative verb" is a term used in linguistics, not specific to Klingon. SuStel has previously used this term a lot (see for example Discord #language-chat 26.3.), and I'm using it similarly in this discussion.
He hasn't misunderstood you. He is specifically invoking the word
"state" as it is used in The Klingon Dictionary and
distinguishing it from the word "stative" as used generally in
linguistics. My argument all along has been about what I'm calling
"quality verbs," which is what TKD calls "verbs expressing a state
or quality," and I've been calling them that to try to avoid
confusion with "stative" verbs, because they were never the
subject of what I was talking about. But you've insisted on
talking about them.
My point is not to discuss the grammar but the semantics. Semantically verbs like neH and ghung are stative as they both describe a state instead of an action.
Yes, I agree: both are "stative." Only one is what Klingon calls
"state or quality." We have evidence in Klingon that perfective
can appear on stative verbs that are not quality verbs. We have no
evidence in Klingon that perfective can appear on quality verbs.
Yes, neH is an "action" in the sense that you can use perfective aspect with it. So while semantically stative, it can be syntactically an action. This is my main argument: stative verbs can be in the perfective aspect meaningfully.
But that is not the topic of conversation. What started this off, and what I've been talking about, is whether perfective can appear on a quality verb, and what it would mean.
Both I and SuStel have many times said that we don't think that it is syntactically forbidden to add -pu' to a quality verb (compare to eg. adding aspect to a verb that has 'e' as object: that is syntactically forbidden even when it makes sense). What we are discussing here is whether using perfective aspect is meaningful. Therefore, it doesn't matter what syntactic feature the words we discuss have.
Yes, there is no known rule prohibiting a perfective suffix on a quality verb. Yes, what we are discussing here is whether using perfective aspect on a quality verb is meaningful. What we are not discussing is whether perfective aspect is meaningful on a stative verb. We already know the answer to that: yes, stative verbs that are not quality verbs have been seen with perfective on them. They are actions in Klingon, not qualities.
I do not accept the argument that because Klingon allows one kind
of stative verb to have perfective that it must necessarily allow
all kinds of stative verbs to have perfective. In Klingon, the
significant distinction between words is whether a word is an
"action" or a "quality." In Klingon, HoH, Qong, and
neH are all considered actions. The semantic distinction
between "event" and "state" does not appear to have any impact on
Klingon grammar in this context.
-- SuStel http://trimboli.name