Time elements and *qaStaHvIS*, continuous and perfective aspect
SuStel:
*I will eat at 2 p.m. and then I will go home* would also be *jISoppu'* and *vIjaHpu'*. No, I will eat is not perfective. It isn't describing a completed action. The eating is not being described as a completed whole. Same with the going home. wa'maH cha' vatlh rep jISop; ghIq juH vIjaH. Is there any situation in which the English Future Simple can be translated into Klingon perfective?
I can't think of one.
I was thinking about this and I would like to ask the question the other way: regardless the fact that English Future Simple cannot be translated into Klingon perfective, would *wa'leS rep wa'maH loS jISoppu', ghIq juH vIjaHpu'* make any sense in Klingon without giving it an interpretation of perfect (*Tomorrow at 2 p.m. I will have eaten*)? I mean, is it possible to interpret it as a future counterpart of the past perfective *wa'Hu' rep wa'maH loS jISoppu', ghIq juH vIjaHpu'* (*Yesterday, I ate at 2 p.m. and then I went home*)? Since Klingon expresses aspect I don't see why it could not be possible, but maybe I'm missing something. By the way: if we were talking about an habit, *I ate at 2 p.m. and then I went home* would be *rep wa'maH loS jISop, ghIq juH vIjaH*, right?
On 2/28/2022 11:47 AM, luis.chaparro@web.de wrote:
SuStel:
*I will eat at 2 p.m. and then I will go home* would also be *jISoppu'* and *vIjaHpu'*. No, I will eat is not perfective. It isn't describing a completed action. The eating is not being described as a completed whole. Same with the going home. wa'maH cha' vatlh rep jISop; ghIq juH vIjaH. Is there any situation in which the English Future Simple can be translated into Klingon perfective? I can't think of one. I was thinking about this and I would like to ask the question the other way: regardless the fact that English Future Simple cannot be translated into Klingon perfective, would *wa'leS rep wa'maH loS jISoppu', ghIq juH vIjaHpu'* make any sense in Klingon without giving it an interpretation of perfect (*Tomorrow at 2 p.m. I will have eaten*)? I mean, is it possible to interpret it as a future counterpart of the past perfective *wa'Hu' rep wa'maH loS jISoppu', ghIq juH vIjaHpu'* (*Yesterday, I ate at 2 p.m. and then I went home*)? Since Klingon expresses aspect I don't see why it could not be possible, but maybe I'm missing something.
*wa'leS rep wa'maH loS jISoppu'; ghIq juH vIjaHpu'* means that I'm looking forward to tomorrow, where there will be a point at which I can look back at 2 pm and see that that's when I ate and then subsequently went home. In English, this is only expressed with the future perfect: T/omorrow at 2 pm I will have eaten, and then I will have gone home./ If you say instead *wa'leS rep wa'maH loS jISop; ghIq juH vIjaH,* this corresponds to English simple future: T/omorrow at 2 pm I will eat, and then I will go home./ This doesn't take a future viewpoint in which you are looking backwards at completed events; it's taking a viewpoint of now and looking forward into the future, seeing each action as they occur. *jISop*/I will eat/ (not continuous, not perfective, just describing the action in the moment it occurs, which happens to be in the future) and *jaH vIjuH*/I will go home/ (the same).
By the way: if we were talking about an habit, *I ate at 2 p.m. and then I went home* would be *rep wa'maH loS jISop, ghIq juH vIjaH*, right?
/I ate at 2 pm, and then I went home/ is only a habit if it means "It was my habit to eat at 2 pm and then go home." If that is what you mean, then *rep wa'maH loS jISop; ghIq juH vIjaH* is correct, although it lacks any indication that thsi is a habit or in the past. For instance, *naH jajmeywIj, Hoch jaj rep wa'maH loS roD jISop; ghIq juH vIjaH*/In my youth, every day at 2 pm I would eat, and then I would go home./ Notice that I used /would,/ the past tense of /will:/ in English, it is common, but not required, to express this sort of thing this way. I could also say /In my youth, every day at 2 pm, I ate, and then I went home./ -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
SuStel:
wa'leS rep wa'maH loS jISoppu'; ghIq juH vIjaHpu' means that I'm looking forward to tomorrow, where there will be a point at which I can look back at 2 pm and see that that's when I ate and then subsequently went home. In English, this is only expressed with the future perfect: Tomorrow at 2 pm I will have eaten, and then I will have gone home.
I understand it. I was just wondering if there could be another interpretation beyond English grammar, since Klingon doesn't express perfect, but it does express perfective. So I was thinking maybe it could be possible to interpret it *also* as a future counterpart of *I ate at 2 p.m. and then I went home*, with the same aspectual implications but in the future (actions considered as a completed whole, not expressing its internal structure and not being perfect). (Although it's not exactly the same, I was led to these questions because Future Simple in Spanish is said by some linguists to be able to express imperfective and perfective aspects, depending on the situation). But if you say that's not the case in Klingon, then my question is answered.
By the way: if we were talking about an habit, *I ate at 2 p.m. and then I went home* would be *rep wa'maH loS jISop, ghIq juH vIjaH*, right? I ate at 2 pm, and then I went home is only a habit if it means "It was my habit to eat at 2 pm and then go home." If that is what you mean, then rep wa'maH loS jISop; ghIq juH vIjaH is correct, although it lacks any indication that thsi is a habit or in the past.
Yes, I know, sorry. I was just focusing on the question and that's why I left aside any concrete indications in the examples.
On 2/28/2022 12:41 PM, luis.chaparro@web.de wrote:
SuStel:
wa'leS rep wa'maH loS jISoppu'; ghIq juH vIjaHpu' means that I'm looking forward to tomorrow, where there will be a point at which I can look back at 2 pm and see that that's when I ate and then subsequently went home. In English, this is only expressed with the future perfect: Tomorrow at 2 pm I will have eaten, and then I will have gone home. I understand it. I was just wondering if there could be another interpretation beyond English grammar, since Klingon doesn't express perfect, but it does express perfective. So I was thinking maybe it could be possible to interpret it *also* as a future counterpart of *I ate at 2 p.m. and then I went home*, with the same aspectual implications but in the future (actions considered as a completed whole, not expressing its internal structure and not being perfect). (Although it's not exactly the same, I was led to these questions because Future Simple in Spanish is said by some linguists to be able to express imperfective and perfective aspects, depending on the situation). But if you say that's not the case in Klingon, then my question is answered.
I think you misunderstand. The Klingon version set in the future is also a completed whole with no internal structure. *wa'leS rep wa'maH loS jISoppu'*/Tomorrow I will have eaten at 2 pm/ is describing the eating as a completed whole and is not describing its flow over time. In English, this can only be expressed with the future perfect, but that says nothing about how it's expressed in Klingon. There is no formula that says "This tense in English turns into this aspect in Klingon." The Klingon sentence verb *jISoppu'*//refers to an act of eating that is completed and does not have its flow over time detailed, whether the act takes place in the past, present, or future. In English, we can express *jISoppu'* in the past as /I ate//, I have eaten, /or /I had eaten,/ depending on whether and when the status of having eaten is important; in the present as /I have eaten;/ and in the future as /I will have eaten./ *wa'Hu' jISoppu'* Yesterday, there was a point at which my eating occurred. I'm not saying anything about how it proceeded, just that it did proceed. *DaH jISoppu' *As of now, my eating is complete. It has just ended. I'm still not saying anything about how it proceeded, just that it did proceed. *wa'leS jISoppu' *Tomorrow, there will be a point at which my eating has just occurred and is completed. I'm still not saying anything about how it proceeded, just that it did proceed. *wa'Hu' jISop *Yesterday, there was a point during which I was eating. I'm describing that moment. I'm not saying that it went on or that it was finished, just that it occurred. *DaH jISop *Right now, my activity is eating. I'm not saying that it will go on or that it has been or will be completed, just that that's my current activity. *wa'leS jISop *Tomorrow, there will be a point during which I will be eating. I'm describing that moment. I'm not saying that will go on or that it will be or will have been completed, just that it will occur. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
SuStel:
I think you misunderstand. The Klingon version set in the future is also a completed whole with no internal structure. wa'leS rep wa'maH loS jISoppu' Tomorrow I will have eaten at 2 pm is describing the eating as a completed whole and is not describing its flow over time.
I understand it, that's clear to me. I'm afraid I'm not being able to express myself correctly in English.
The Klingon sentence verb jISoppu' refers to an act of eating that is completed and does not have its flow over time detailed, whether the act takes place in the past, present, or future. In English, we can express jISoppu' in the past as I ate, I have eaten, or I had eaten, depending on whether and when the status of having eaten is important; in the present as I have eaten; and in the future as I will have eaten.
That's what I'm trying to say: In the past, you have in English a non-perfect form (*I ate*) and two perfect forms (*I have eaten* and *I had eaten*) to express *jISoppu'*. The non-perfect form doesn't express that the action takes place before another point in time for which the result of the action is relevant. In the future, you only have in English a perfect form (*I will have eaten*), but I was wondering if there could be for the future an interpretation similar to *I ate*, perfective but not perfect, even though this cannot be expressed by English future tenses.
SuStel and I are repeatedly explaining to you that there is no map between tenses (perfect or otherwise) and the Klingon perfective aspect, and you keep coming back asking if a certain perfect tense maps to the Klingon perfective aspect. Think of an activity as something that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Now, give that activity a time anchor and click the beginning of the activity to the time anchor with {-choH}, or click the middle of the activity to the time anchor with {-taH} or {-lI’} or click the end of the activity (or time after the end of the activity) to the time anchor with {-pu’} or {-ta’}. There truly is no tense in Klingon. Tense is wholly replaced by the Time Stamp. Languages that have “perfect” tenses are not adding the Klingon perfective aspect to a tense to get the perfective tense. This is what you keep presuming, but it’s a bad model for how the perfective aspect works. It doesn’t work, except randomly, by accident. Perfective aspect is fundamentally different from perfect tense. If you don’t recognize that difference, then you don’t understand perfective aspect. charghwI’, retired.
On Feb 28, 2022, at 1:28 PM, luis.chaparro@web.de wrote:
SuStel:
I think you misunderstand. The Klingon version set in the future is also a completed whole with no internal structure. wa'leS rep wa'maH loS jISoppu' Tomorrow I will have eaten at 2 pm is describing the eating as a completed whole and is not describing its flow over time.
I understand it, that's clear to me. I'm afraid I'm not being able to express myself correctly in English.
The Klingon sentence verb jISoppu' refers to an act of eating that is completed and does not have its flow over time detailed, whether the act takes place in the past, present, or future. In English, we can express jISoppu' in the past as I ate, I have eaten, or I had eaten, depending on whether and when the status of having eaten is important; in the present as I have eaten; and in the future as I will have eaten.
That's what I'm trying to say: In the past, you have in English a non-perfect form (*I ate*) and two perfect forms (*I have eaten* and *I had eaten*) to express *jISoppu'*. The non-perfect form doesn't express that the action takes place before another point in time for which the result of the action is relevant. In the future, you only have in English a perfect form (*I will have eaten*), but I was wondering if there could be for the future an interpretation similar to *I ate*, perfective but not perfect, even though this cannot be expressed by English future tenses. _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org
At one point in this post, I slipped and referred to the “perfective tense”. I obviously meant “perfect tense”. The similarity of the words perfect and perfective make this mistake, and understanding the difference, common. charghwI’, retired.
On Feb 28, 2022, at 5:36 PM, Will Martin <willmartin2@mac.com> wrote:
SuStel and I are repeatedly explaining to you that there is no map between tenses (perfect or otherwise) and the Klingon perfective aspect, and you keep coming back asking if a certain perfect tense maps to the Klingon perfective aspect.
Think of an activity as something that has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Now, give that activity a time anchor and click the beginning of the activity to the time anchor with {-choH}, or click the middle of the activity to the time anchor with {-taH} or {-lI’} or click the end of the activity (or time after the end of the activity) to the time anchor with {-pu’} or {-ta’}.
There truly is no tense in Klingon. Tense is wholly replaced by the Time Stamp.
Languages that have “perfect” tenses are not adding the Klingon perfective aspect to a tense to get the perfective tense. This is what you keep presuming, but it’s a bad model for how the perfective aspect works. It doesn’t work, except randomly, by accident.
Perfective aspect is fundamentally different from perfect tense. If you don’t recognize that difference, then you don’t understand perfective aspect.
charghwI’, retired.
On Feb 28, 2022, at 1:28 PM, luis.chaparro@web.de wrote:
SuStel:
I think you misunderstand. The Klingon version set in the future is also a completed whole with no internal structure. wa'leS rep wa'maH loS jISoppu' Tomorrow I will have eaten at 2 pm is describing the eating as a completed whole and is not describing its flow over time.
I understand it, that's clear to me. I'm afraid I'm not being able to express myself correctly in English.
The Klingon sentence verb jISoppu' refers to an act of eating that is completed and does not have its flow over time detailed, whether the act takes place in the past, present, or future. In English, we can express jISoppu' in the past as I ate, I have eaten, or I had eaten, depending on whether and when the status of having eaten is important; in the present as I have eaten; and in the future as I will have eaten.
That's what I'm trying to say: In the past, you have in English a non-perfect form (*I ate*) and two perfect forms (*I have eaten* and *I had eaten*) to express *jISoppu'*. The non-perfect form doesn't express that the action takes place before another point in time for which the result of the action is relevant. In the future, you only have in English a perfect form (*I will have eaten*), but I was wondering if there could be for the future an interpretation similar to *I ate*, perfective but not perfect, even though this cannot be expressed by English future tenses. _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org
On 2/28/2022 5:36 PM, Will Martin wrote:
SuStel and I are repeatedly explaining to you that there is no map between tenses (perfect or otherwise) and the Klingon perfective aspect, and you keep coming back asking if a certain perfect tense maps to the Klingon perfective aspect.
Think of an activity as something that has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Now, give that activity a time anchor and click the beginning of the activity to the time anchor with {-choH}, or click the middle of the activity to the time anchor with {-taH} or {-lI’} or click the end of the activity (or time after the end of the activity) to the time anchor with {-pu’} or {-ta’}.
I agree with your main point, but there is a vital detail here that isn't right. You describe *-choH* as anchoring the action to the beginning and *-taH* or *-lI'* anchoring the action in the middle. These are correct. But *-pu'* and *-ta'* are definitely NOT actions anchored at the end. The whole point of perfective is that there is NO internal structure to the action over time. When expressing perfective, you can't examine things like the start, middle, and end of it. That's the whole point. In your analogy, perfective wouldn't be a ribbon being anchored at certain points along the timeline; it would be a thumbtack pushed into the timeline at a certain point. In Klingon, the perfective is used specifically to indicate that this unexaminable action is /completed./ But the ribbon/thumbtack analogy is useful. You haven't tried to describe the shape of a verb without continuous or perfective suffixes. They might be a short stub of a ribbon hovering over a certain point in the timeline but not anchored at all. Aspectless Klingon verbs are basically imperfect, but without any progressive or continuous sense.
There truly is no tense in Klingon. Tense is wholly replaced by the Time Stamp.
Or any other time context, explicit or implicit. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
I tried to express your point with my parenthetical “(or time after the end of the activity)”, but I see that it was an incomplete expression. How’s this: The duration of the action of the verb is like a boat in a sea. The time context is like you, dropping from the sky onto the boat or the sea. If you land on the bow, the verb gets {-choH}. If you land in the boat, it gets {-taH} or {-lI’}. If you land on the stern, or if you land behind the boat SO THAT WHEN YOU LOOK AT THE BOAT, ALL YOU SEE IS THE STERN, then it gets {-pu’} or {-ta’}. Perfective is all about the stern. It’s as if the rest of the boat escapes your notice. The whole point of the time stamp is to give you the perspective of an action that is complete; a memory and not an action in any form except memory. pItlh charghwI’ ‘utlh (ghaH, ghaH, -Daj)
On Feb 28, 2022, at 6:57 PM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
On 2/28/2022 5:36 PM, Will Martin wrote:
SuStel and I are repeatedly explaining to you that there is no map between tenses (perfect or otherwise) and the Klingon perfective aspect, and you keep coming back asking if a certain perfect tense maps to the Klingon perfective aspect.
Think of an activity as something that has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Now, give that activity a time anchor and click the beginning of the activity to the time anchor with {-choH}, or click the middle of the activity to the time anchor with {-taH} or {-lI’} or click the end of the activity (or time after the end of the activity) to the time anchor with {-pu’} or {-ta’}. I agree with your main point, but there is a vital detail here that isn't right.
You describe -choH as anchoring the action to the beginning and -taH or -lI' anchoring the action in the middle. These are correct. But -pu' and -ta' are definitely NOT actions anchored at the end.
The whole point of perfective is that there is NO internal structure to the action over time. When expressing perfective, you can't examine things like the start, middle, and end of it. That's the whole point. In your analogy, perfective wouldn't be a ribbon being anchored at certain points along the timeline; it would be a thumbtack pushed into the timeline at a certain point. In Klingon, the perfective is used specifically to indicate that this unexaminable action is completed.
But the ribbon/thumbtack analogy is useful. You haven't tried to describe the shape of a verb without continuous or perfective suffixes. They might be a short stub of a ribbon hovering over a certain point in the timeline but not anchored at all. Aspectless Klingon verbs are basically imperfect, but without any progressive or continuous sense.
There truly is no tense in Klingon. Tense is wholly replaced by the Time Stamp. Or any other time context, explicit or implicit.
-- SuStel http://trimboli.name <http://trimboli.name/>_______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org
charghwI':
SuStel and I are repeatedly explaining to you that there is no map between tenses (perfect or otherwise) and the Klingon perfective aspect, and you keep coming back asking if a certain perfect tense maps to the Klingon perfective aspect.
I'm really sorry if I've bothered you or anyone with my questions, that was never my intention. I'm very grateful for the patience and help I experience in this email list. Maybe I'm just stuck on some particular perspective or maybe I'm not able to express what I'm trying to say. I wasn't trying to ask if a certain perfect tense maps to the Klingon perfective aspect, I was actually trying (that's at least what I think) to ask the opposite: I was trying to think about aspect without hanging it to a specific tense. My question was why *wa'leS rep wa'maH loS jISoppu'* must necessarily fit the English Future Perfect, and why we couldn't give it another interpretation, *even though* there is no English tense to express it: instead of forcing it to a perfect interpretation in which the eating will be completed before 2 pm (*Tomorrow at 2 pm I will have eaten*), why couldn't we give it, depending on the situation, a perfective but not perfect interpretation similar to *Yesterday I ate at 2 pm*, but in the future, where the eating happens at 2 pm and is considered as a completed whole? In the past you can chose to translate *jISoppu'* with a perfect tense (e.g. *I had eaten*) or with a non perfect tense (*I ate*), depending on the situation. Why should we interpret *jISoppu'* in the future always as perfect? If no one wants to continue this thread, that's really no problem. I'm already very happy with everything I've learned. Thank you!
On 3/1/2022 7:53 AM, luis.chaparro@web.de wrote:
I wasn't trying to ask if a certain perfect tense maps to the Klingon perfective aspect, I was actually trying (that's at least what I think) to ask the opposite: I was trying to think about aspect without hanging it to a specific tense. My question was why *wa'leS rep wa'maH loS jISoppu'* must necessarily fit the English Future Perfect, and why we couldn't give it another interpretation, *even though* there is no English tense to express it:
The key here is not to try to understand it in terms of fitting or not fitting English tenses. What you need to do is understand what the Klingon elements /mean,/ not how they translate.
instead of forcing it to a perfect interpretation in which the eating will be completed before 2 pm (*Tomorrow at 2 pm I will have eaten*), why couldn't we give it, depending on the situation, a perfective but not perfect interpretation similar to *Yesterday I ate at 2 pm*, but in the future, where the eating happens at 2 pm and is considered as a completed whole?
English does not have any special markers for perfective concepts, so it doesn't matter what verb tense you use.
In the past you can chose to translate *jISoppu'* with a perfect tense (e.g . *I had eaten*) or with a non perfect tense (*I ate*), depending on the situation. Why should we interpret *jISoppu'* in the future always as perfect?
Because Klingon perfective includes the concept of being completed, and to express something as completed, you have to be looking at it from after it is completed. In English, we can use the simple past tense to look backward at an action. We are looking at that action from a vantage point where its completion can be perceived. If we use the simple future to look forward to an action, we can only perceive the beginning of the action. /I will eat/ does not imply completion. In order to take a vantage point that lets us see the future action as completed, we have to go even farther into the future, to a point where the action is finished. We can then look backward at it to see its completion. This kind of expression has a name: future perfect. That's why I can't give you a future perfective that isn't perfect in English. Again, this is just the way English works. It's more important here that you try to understand the way that /Klingon/ works, and to do that you need to analyze and understand the Klingon elements involved /regardless/ of how they're translated into English or Spanish. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
Agreeing with SuStel here and trying to help understand the brokenness of saying that perfective aspect with a future time stamp always needs to be future perfect in English: Your example is {wa’leS rep wa’maH loS jISoppu’} could be translated as: Tomorrow at 2:00pm, I will have eaten. (Future perfect) Tomorrow at 2:00pm, I will finish eating. (Simple future) Tomorrow at 2:00pm, I will have finished eating. (Future perfect) [Context: I want to meet with you, but I don’t want to disturb your meal.] Tomorrow at 2:00pm, I will not be eating [because I will have finished eating by then]. I think the weirdness here is that simple tense always refers to “now”, even when you have a Time Stamp. Perfect tense just tries to mimic the same information, relative to the time stamp. Future perfect is just past tense applied to some future Time Stamp. Aspect is about the duration of the action of the verb. What part of that duration are you looking at? Are you looking at the start of the action? Are you looking at a time while the action is occurring? Are you looking at the state of the action being completed? The moment that an action is completed triggers the perfective aspect, and the perfective aspect holds from that moment infinitely into the future. Real world example: I’m building a retainer wall. I started it four days ago. I have built this wall for three of the past four days. If I work on the wall for another three days, I will have built the wall for a week. It probably still won’t be completed. I have used perfect tense to describe several stages of the wall construction, but I can’t use the perfective aspect until the wall is done. You may argue that I should have said, “I will have been building the wall for a week,” and that might be a more accurate statement, but what I wrote was not wrong in English, though using {-pu’} or {-ta’} would be wrong in Klingon. Why? Because in that future, three days from now, the building process of the wall will extend into the past, and the focus of my attention in my statement is on that pastness of the process instead of on the completion of the process. Klingon doesn’t care if the process has any pastness. It only cares about it having completion. Tense, including perfect tense, is all about which way you are looking in time from whatever time environment you are looking. Aspect is all about specific time markers associated with the duration of the action of the verb. SuStel: Is this an accurate description? Can you improve on it, clarifying anything I’m getting wrong? Luis: Does this clarify the issue at all? pItlh charghwI’ ‘utlh (ghaH, ghaH, -Daj)
On Mar 1, 2022, at 9:03 AM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
On 3/1/2022 7:53 AM, luis.chaparro@web.de <mailto:luis.chaparro@web.de> wrote:
I wasn't trying to ask if a certain perfect tense maps to the Klingon perfective aspect, I was actually trying (that's at least what I think) to ask the opposite: I was trying to think about aspect without hanging it to a specific tense. My question was why *wa'leS rep wa'maH loS jISoppu'* must necessarily fit the English Future Perfect, and why we couldn't give it another interpretation, *even though* there is no English tense to express it: The key here is not to try to understand it in terms of fitting or not fitting English tenses. What you need to do is understand what the Klingon elements mean, not how they translate.
instead of forcing it to a perfect interpretation in which the eating will be completed before 2 pm (*Tomorrow at 2 pm I will have eaten*), why couldn't we give it, depending on the situation, a perfective but not perfect interpretation similar to *Yesterday I ate at 2 pm*, but in the future, where the eating happens at 2 pm and is considered as a completed whole? English does not have any special markers for perfective concepts, so it doesn't matter what verb tense you use.
In the past you can chose to translate *jISoppu'* with a perfect tense (e.g . *I had eaten*) or with a non perfect tense (*I ate*), depending on the situation. Why should we interpret *jISoppu'* in the future always as perfect? Because Klingon perfective includes the concept of being completed, and to express something as completed, you have to be looking at it from after it is completed.
In English, we can use the simple past tense to look backward at an action. We are looking at that action from a vantage point where its completion can be perceived. If we use the simple future to look forward to an action, we can only perceive the beginning of the action. I will eat does not imply completion. In order to take a vantage point that lets us see the future action as completed, we have to go even farther into the future, to a point where the action is finished. We can then look backward at it to see its completion. This kind of expression has a name: future perfect.
That's why I can't give you a future perfective that isn't perfect in English.
Again, this is just the way English works. It's more important here that you try to understand the way that Klingon works, and to do that you need to analyze and understand the Klingon elements involved regardless of how they're translated into English or Spanish.
-- SuStel http://trimboli.name <http://trimboli.name/>_______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org
Thank you again, SuStel and charghwI', for your perseverance in helping. I believe that, actually, our opinions don't differ too much. Maybe I've found the source of misunderstanding. When you say in English *Yesterday I ate at 2 pm*, does it mean that at 2 pm you have already eaten? Because in Spanish, when we say *Ayer comí a las 2* (Spanish perfective tense *Pretérito Indefinido*) it actually means you started at 2 pm. The action of eating lasts more than an instant, of course, but due to the perfective aspect this action is nevertheless presented as a completed whole, without referring to its internal flow. Anyway, the important thing is I think I understand now (much better) how aspect works in Klingon, regardless how we say those things in English or Spanish.
On 3/1/2022 12:10 PM, luis.chaparro@web.de wrote:
Maybe I've found the source of misunderstanding. When you say in English *Yesterday I ate at 2 pm*, does it mean that at 2 pm you have already eaten?
No. It means that the eating occurred at 2 pm, but doesn't say anything about when eating was completed. Without any further context, one would assume that the eating /started/ at 2 pm, but it's not literally saying that. You're taking your finger, pointing at 2 pm, and saying that that is when you ate. You're not discussing how long it took you to eat it or when you started or stopped eating. 2 pm is treated like a durationless point in which the action occurred, even if the action is not literally instantaneous. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
I think that there is a danger of over-analysing isolated sentences. «jISop», «jISoptaH» and «jISoppu'» mean almost the same thing: I eat something. The specifics of when and how often and how this relates to other actions I make depend on context. I think it would be more useful to instead consider longer texts and how aspect is used in them. After all, notions like "completed" and "ongoing" require that there are other actions to compare this action to. Usually we write long texts, not single sentences in isolation, so it is important to learn how aspects are used as tools in story-telling and other writing. Some time ago I discussed aspects with SuStel using the following story as an example: I acquired my bat'leth many years ago. I was travelling in the desert, when I met an old man. He had been robbed and injured by thieves and couldn't fight. I took his bat'leth, tracked down the thieves and killed them. When I returned, I found the old man dead. ben law' betleHwIj vISuqpu'. DebDaq jIlengtaHvIS loD qan vIqIH. luHejpu' nIHwI' 'ej lurIQmoHpu'. SuvlaHbe'. betleHDaj vItlhap, nIHwI'pu' vISam 'ej vIHoH. jIcheghDI', Heghpu' loD qan 'e' vItu'. Here the perfective aspect is used to signify that we are looking past to completed actions, detaching them from the rest of the storyline. I think it would be useful if we used long texts like this as examples instead of individual sentences. Iikka "fergusq" Hauhio ------- Original Message ------- On Tuesday, March 1st, 2022 at 19.20, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
On 3/1/2022 12:10 PM, luis.chaparro@web.de wrote:
Maybe I've found the source of misunderstanding. When you say in English *Yesterday I ate at 2 pm*, does it mean that at 2 pm you have already eaten?
No. It means that the eating occurred at 2 pm, but doesn't say anything about when eating was completed. Without any further context, one would assume that the eating started at 2 pm, but it's not literally saying that. You're taking your finger, pointing at 2 pm, and saying that that is when you ate. You're not discussing how long it took you to eat it or when you started or stopped eating. 2 pm is treated like a durationless point in which the action occurred, even if the action is not literally instantaneous.
-- SuStel http://trimboli.name
participants (5)
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Iikka Hauhio -
luis.chaparro＠web.de -
SuStel -
Will Martin -
Will Martin