One would think that by now, I’d have the perfective down.

I’m not trying to argue here. I trust your understanding of the perfective and want your advice to steer me away from my thinking. I was starting with “Because I had been hungry, I ordered pizza.” The ordering was simple past, so not perfective. The hunger, within the time setting of ordering the pizza, was a level farther into the past.

To some extent, both the ordering of the pizza and my hunger are now complete, since I ordered and ate the pizza.

Please clarify. I tend to renew my understanding of the perfective after your explanations and I thank you in advance.

You do not understand that perfective is not the same as perfect.

English has a lot of tenses. Here are a few relevant ones.

I order pizza. Simple present tense.
I have ordered pizza. Present perfect tense.
I ordered pizza. Simple past tense.
I had ordered pizza. Past perfect tense, also called pluperfect.
I will order pizza. Simple future tense.
I will have ordered pizza. Future perfect tense.

The simple tenses tell you which direction in time from the moment of speaking the action takes place.

I order pizza. Simple present tense. The ordering happens as I say this sentence.
I ordered pizza. Simple past tense. The ordering happened before I said this sentence.
I will order pizza. Simple future tense. The order will happen after I say this sentence.

The perfect tenses tell you which direction in time relative to a reference event the action takes place.

By 3:00, I had ordered pizza. Pluperfect. The order happened before 3:00, which was before now.
By 3:00, I will have ordered pizza. Future perfect. The order will happen before 3:00, which has not happened yet.

Sometimes the moment of speaking and the reference event are the same moment.

Now I have ordered pizza. Present perfect. The reference event now is the same as the moment of speaking, and the order happened before now.

What's true for all of these is that the tense tells you in which direction of time the event occurs relative to some other event. This is the function of tense.

Aspect, on the other hand, doesn't tell you in which direction of time an event occurs. Aspect tells you the shape of an event. It tells you how the event occurred and how you're looking at it. Aspect tells you things like whether an action is unchanging or continuous or instantaneous or having an abrupt start or having an abrupt ending or being repetitive or being habitual or being timeless. It doesn't tell you WHEN the action happened, just HOW it happened and how YOU are viewing it.

It is VERY IMPORTANT at this point to keep firmly in your mind that aspect does note tell you ANYTHING about which direction in time an event is relative to now or a reference point.

Klingon has four aspect suffixes. One of these is -pu'. It means perfective. It means the action has a specific shape: it is a completed action, and you are viewing it from a point after it is completed. It is an action described as having an end point, and it is being viewed from after that endpoint has been reached. (Notice that your VIEWPOINT is not the same as NOW or even a reference event. It is simply imagining yourself at a point on the timeline after the event such that you can look back at it and see that it is completed.)

pItSa' chab vIvunpu'. An order of pizza takes place. I am placing the listener at a viewpoint just after the order, where we can see that the order was completed. This sentence doesn't say ANYTHING WHATSOEVER about when the order takes place or whether it happens before or after now. There is no reference event. It is completely impossible to place this isolated sentence on a timeline.

jIghungpu'. This describes my state of hunger. I am placing the listener at a viewpoint after my hunger is over, to look back in time to see my hunger come to an end. This sentence also says absolutely nothing about whether this hunger occurs before, simultaneously with, or after now, and there is no reference event. It is completely impossible to place this isolated sentence on a timeline.

Now remember that old chestnut of TKD: "The absence of a Type 7 suffix usually means that the action is not completed and is not continuous (that is, it is not one of the things indicated by the Type 7 suffixes)." "Usually" in this context does not mean "you can ignore this rule whenever you want." It means there are times when your desire to use a type 7 suffix is blocked by some other rule, like how you can't use a type 7 suffix on the second verb of a sentence-as-object construction. Apply the rule to these sentences:

pItSa' chab vIvun. An order of pizza takes place. The action described cannot be considered to be viewed from after its completion, and it cannot be considered to be viewed from deep inside without seeing the endpoints (the meaning of continuous, which I won't get into here). What kinds of actions might such a sentence describe? Well, the action could be happening simultaneously with the viewpoint. It hasn't finished yet. Or our viewpoint might be situated before the action even starts, placing the action in the future of the viewpoint. Or the action might be timeless, not occurring at any given time, but just being generally true. Or the action might be something I do over and over again, making it impossible to place a given viewpoint anywhere that would identify the action as completed. All of these are valid uses of this sentence, and given the right context, you should be able to figure out which one I mean.

Now go back to English. How would you describe ordering a pizza earlier in the day, at 3:00?

At 3:00 this afternoon, I ordered pizza.

Here, we use the simple past tense to describe the action as BEFORE NOW. The reference time pegs when that was, but the tense just tells us it's before now. Now here's the good bit. THIS ACTION IS PERFECTIVE. English doesn't mark verbs for perfective and doesn't have a tense corresponding to it. But you can work out the details. This is a single instance of ordering a pizza, so it's not something habitual or repetitive or general. It happens exactly once: at 3:00 this afternoon. It's not happening simultaneously with or after the viewpoint of the listener — remember, the viewpoint is not the same as the reference event — because it's impossible to follow that sentence with anything except what happened AFTER the order (or to suddenly jump the viewpoint back in time). This is a perfective sentence, even though English does not mark its sentences for perfective.

For us English speakers, it takes a lot of work to recognize perfective. It's not natural for us. Our tenses are complex and subtle and difficult for non-natives to learn, but they don't match the way Klingon works. Klingon tense is purely contextual. Klingon aspect doesn't line up with any English grammar. TKD claims it will TRANSLATE Klingon perfective with English present perfect tense, but it only does so about half the time. The other half it's simple past tense. But even future perfect tense is a possible translation for perfective: DaHjaj ram pItSa' chab vIvunpu' Tonight I will have ordered pizza. Viewpoint is looking back on the completed order; both the viewpoint and the order take place at the reference time, tonight. Now is before tonight.

And I think you'll find that understanding perfective this way will match up perfectly with canon.

So, any questions? Do you see that Klingon perfective does not mean "prior to the time context"? It is not equal to English perfect tenses?

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name