On 12/21/2018 9:15 AM, mayqel qunenoS wrote:
Suppose I write: {loSmaH wa' ben jIboghpu'} for "I am 41 years old".
Literally though, the klingon goes "41 years ago I have been born" i.e. 41 years ago my "being born" has been completed.
Lets forget this for the moment..
If I write {wa'Hu' pItSa' vISoppu'}, this means that "one day ago my eating the pizza has been completed". But I could have eaten this pizza many days ago, and yesterday is just another day during which my eating of the pizza continues to be completed.
So, can't the {loSmaH wa' ben jIboghpu'} be interpreted to mean, that I am in fact older than 41, and that it is just that 41 years ago, my birth (which took place way earlier) remains completed ?
So, why not write instead {loSmaH wa' ben jIbogh}, for "41 years ago I am born", thus avoiding the ambiguity ?
You are interpreting Klingon *-pu'* as if it were English present perfect tense, which it is not. English present perfect tense means that I'm talking about a time right now, and as of right now, the thing I'm talking about happened in the past. /Happened in the past/ tells you /when/ something happened; that means it's /tense./ Klingon doesn't have verb tenses. Klingon *-pu'* means that, whenever an action happens, it is completed. The action is viewed as a complete unit, a whole that has no visible internal temporal flow. *loSmaH ben jIboghpu'.* Forty years ago, the action *bogh* occurred and was completed. When you do not use perfective or continuous aspects, the verb is not perfective and not continuous. You're not just not mentioning whether it's those things; it's specifically not those things. *loSmaH ben jIbogh* means that you're in that moment of being born forty years ago. The *bogh* is not yet complete and not an ongoing action. So no, you can't use *loSmaH ben jIboghpu'* to mean you're 42 or 50 or anything like that. *-pu'* doesn't mean /sometime before the current time context;/ it means /viewed as a completed whole./ Okrand says in /The Klingon Dictionary/ that for consistency he will translate Klingon perfective into English present perfect tense, and then he only does it about half the time. We get lots of counterexamples, like *yaS vImojpu'*/I became an officer/ (the becoming is done),//*De''e' vItlhapnISpu'*/I needed to get the INFORMATION /(the need is over), *vIneHpu'*/I wanted them/ (the wanting is over), *qaja'pu'*/I told you/ (the telling is complete), *Qaw''eghpu'* /he/she destroyed himself/herself/ (the destruction is complete). There are more. So don't be fooled into thinking that *-pu'* is always translated by /have/had/has verbed,/ or that it means exactly what those English phrases mean. English does not have verbal perfective; Klingon does. Klingon does not have perfect tenses; English does. They are not the same thing. *wa'Hu' pItSa' chab vISoppu'*/Yesterday I ate a pizza./ The eating happened yesterday, and it was completed. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name