SuStel:ja'chuqghach a telling to each other ja'chuqtaHghach an ongoing telling to each otherOk, but for verbs without suffix we don't have this difference. I mean, the only way to say *the eating* is saying *the ongoing eating* (*SoptaHghach*), right?
SoptaHghach means something different than Sopghach. While Sopghach is not technically a grammatical term, Okrand explains that you might use such a word temporarily if it made a technical point, with a wink to its ungrammaticality.
How to say the eating depends on what you mean. A competed act of eating? Soppu'ghach. An ongoing act of eating? SoptaHghach. The beginning of the eating? SopchoHghach. And generally, -ghach is more often used for technical discussions; usually instead of saying something like nI' SoptaHghach the ongoing eating was long, you'd say something like SoptaH chaH qaStaHvIS poH nI' they were eating for a long time.
And, of course, we can also say Sopchuqghach the
eating of each other...
If you want the "past event relevant to the named time" stuff in Klingon, then you have to say it explicitly. wa'Hu' DungluQ jISoppu', pov vaj pe'vIl jISuvpu' I ate at noon yesterday, so in the afternoon I fought forcefully. I named the time context for each verb to clearly set their temporal order and used vaj to show that the one led to the other.But then, we should do the same for the future, shouldn't we? If we want the *past event relevant to the named time* stuff, we have to say it explicitly. Just saying *wa'leS DungluQ jISoppu'*, without any further context, wouldn't have the connotation of perfect that the English *Tomorrow at noon I will have eaten* has.
Right. Tomorrow at noon I will have eaten is close to the
meaning of the Klingon, but it's not exact. You might say wa'leS
DungluQ jISoppu', pov vaj pe'vIl jISuvpu' Tomorrow at
noon I will have eaten, so in the afternoon I will have fought
forcefully. English doesn't let me say this without the
future perfect tense. If I could borrow the simple past tense, I
could say Tomorrow at noon I ate, so in the afternoon
(tomorrow) I fought forcefully. But we can't say that in
English.
-- SuStel http://trimboli.name