I see.. However, I need to ask; has {wa'logh} ever been used in the sense of "Once we were brothers" ? qunnoq On Aug 24, 2017 6:05 PM, "nIqolay Q" <niqolay0@gmail.com> wrote:

You're conflating two meanings of the English word "once": "happening one time" and "at some time in the past". (The two meanings are probably related etymologically, but they're distinct now.)

{wa'logh loDnI' maH} would mean "We are brothers one time; there is one occurrence of us being brothers".

You want something that suggests the past more explicitly like: {'op ben loDnI' maH} "Some years ago, we were brothers." {'op ret loDnI' maH} "Some unspecified amount of time ago, we were brothers." ({'op ret} might be controversial.) {loDnI' maHpu'} "We have been brothers; we have completed being brothers." {loDnI' maH rIntaH} "We are finished being brothers."

On Thu, Aug 24, 2017 at 10:51 AM, mayqel qunenoS <mihkoun@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Is it possible to use {wa'logh} as a timestamp, in the following way ?:

{wa'logh, loDnI' maH} Once, we were brothers.

qunnoq

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On Thu, Aug 24, 2017 at 3:37 PM, mayqel qunenoS <mihkoun@gmail.com> wrote:

nIqolay Q:

...

You're conflating two meanings of the English word "once": "happening one time" and "at some time in the past".

maj. But if the event I'm talking about, happened "one time, at some time in the past", then why not use {wa'DIch} as a timestamp too ?

{wa'logh, vIghro'lIj vIje'} Once, I fed your cat

Because {wa'logh} is not a timestamp, it's an adverbial describing repetition. It has nothing to do with tense. In terms of tense, {wa'logh vIghro'lIj vIje'} can mean "I feed your cat once" (present), "I fed your cat once" (past), or "I will feed your cat once" (future). If you want to include the notions of both "one repetition" and also "in the past" you need to include some sort of time context along with {wa'logh}, either by including some past-tense timestamp in the sentence or by having an earlier sentence establish a past-tense context.