SuStel:> bIpawpu'DI', qagh vIneH. When you> arrived, I wanted gagh.> I'm describing your arrival as completed:> you're standing before me. I'm describing> my desire without the perfective, because> my desire is not completed when you> arrive.
Ok, I understand this. But let me ask you something..
Yesterday, a romulan beams down in my room, punches me, and then leaves.
Looking back on the event, should I write: {jIHDaq narghpu'DI', muqIppu'}or should I write {jIHDaq narghpu'DI', muqIp}?
Instinctively, I'd choose to say {jIHDaq narghpu'DI', muqIppu'} ("as soon as he has appeared he has hit me"). But I get the impression that this could be understood as "by the time he appeared he had already hit me", i.e. the hitting took place before the romulan's arrival.
It depends on whether you are describing being in the middle of the event or being at a point after the event.
I'm not going to demonstrate with the word qIp hit, because the present, past, and participle forms of hit are all the same, obscuring the point. I'll use the word legh see (which has past and participle forms saw and seen).I might be telling you a story and expressing my perspective as part of that story:
jIHDaq narghpu'DI', mulegh. As soon as he had appeared at my location, he sees me. The arrival is a completed event from this point of view, and the seeing occurs now. I'm not describing being in the moment after the seeing, so the seeing is not completed and hence not perfective.
Or I might be giving you a list of events that occurred, and now we're looking back at them:
jIHDaq narghpu'DI', muleghpu'. As soon as he had appeared at my location, he saw me. The arrival is a completed event that sets the context for the event of seeing, which from our current viewpoint is also a completed event.
Which one you choose depends on the context in which you are speaking and the viewpoint which that context demands. Do you want to put the listener in the middle of the action, or do you want to report on events at a temporal remove? For any given sentence, does the verb's activity reach beyond the moment you are expressing?
wa'Hu' jIHDaq narghpu'DI', jIQuch. As soon as he had appeared at my location yesterday, I was happy. Here I would not use perfective no matter whether it was an in-the-moment expression or an after-the-fact expression because I'm not describing an event that is completed in the moment I describe it. I don't experience a moment of happiness that then ends; I'm simply describing what my state happened to be when he appeared. If I want to say that I became happy at that moment, becoming happy is a momentary action, and we are again back to deciding whether I'm in the moment or after the fact.
wa'Hu' jIHDaq narghpu'DI', jIQuchchoH. I'd use this to put you in the moment of becoming happy.
wa'Hu' jIHDaq narghpu'DI', jIQuchchoHpu'. I'd use this to
report the moment of becoming happy in an after-action kind of
way.
-- SuStel http://trimboli.name