SuStel:> It's not about whether you're looking back> on an event; it's whether you're describing> an event as completed.
ok, I understand this.. But there's something which confuses me..
Imagine this: While I'm driving from new york to colorado, I see a cat.
If I say {nyuyorghvo' *colorado*Daq jISeDtaHvIS vIghro' vIlegh}, then doesn't that mean that "throughout the journey I see the cat" ?
So, shouldn' we say instead {nyuyorghvo' *colorado*Daq jISeDtaHvIS vIghro' vIleghpu'} ?
Two things. First, using -taH + vIS doesn't imply throughout; it means while, during. If an action happens during another action and the two actions take the same amount of time, then you might say throughout. But if one action is momentary during another action, this isn't throughout.
I'm going to simplify your sentence for the second part. While I travel, I see a cat. I intend here to say that I spot a cat on the side of the road as I pass it, not that I am staring at a cat the whole time I'm journeying.
In the English sentence, the tenses employed mean that traveling is an ongoing activity that I am currently engaged in, and I am currently passing the cat and noticing it. The English sentence has put the listener or reader in the very moment of spotting the cat. They are not looking back on the moment of spotting the cat; the sentence puts the listener into the very moment of the spotting.
To do this in Klingon, say jIlengtaHvIS vIghro' vIlegh.
Lacking perfective or continuous on legh means the seeing
is neither completed nor ongoing. I'm putting the listener into
the moment of the seeing, so it's not completed. I'm not
describing for the listener an activity of looking at the cat over
a period of time, so it's not continuous. Use the unaspected verb.
It doesn't matter whether the seeing of the cat happened before or
is happening now; what matters is that I'm describing being in the
moment of the seeing, not looking back at it after it's over.
Now, if I wanted to put the listener in the position of looking back at the spotting of the cat after it's already happened, you need perfective, because that's what perfective does. jIlengtaHvIS vIghro' vIleghpu' While I traveled, I saw a cat. The listener is asked to put themselves in a position to look back at an event. The traveling remains continuous because continuousness is required to use -vIS, but now we're not looking at the seeing from the moment of the seeing; we're looking back at it as a completed event. The Klingon sentence needs to be perfective.
When you lack a perfective (and continuous) suffix on a verb,
that verb usually cannot be interpreted as placing the listener at
a point where they can look back at the completed event.
(Exceptions include times when you are not allowed to use aspect
suffixes, like on the second verb of a sentence-as-object
construction, and when you use rIntaH instead of a
suffix.) This is why jIlengtaHvIS vIghro' vIlegh cannot
mean While I traveled, I saw a cat in the sense of a
completed-from-my-viewpoint, one-time event of seeing. If an
action is to be described as completed, it MUST have perfective on
it. If jIlengtaHvIS vIghro' vIlegh is to be interpreted as
happening in the past, it either means the speaker is asking the
listener to inhabit a viewpoint in the past (like the historical
present tense of English) or the seeing was a habitual or regular
thing during the trip (while I was journeying, I would see this
cat from time to time).
-- SuStel http://trimboli.name