[Tlhingan-hol] A demonstration of aspect we can all follow

[Qov]

At 13:49 '?????' 6/7/2012, you wrote:
>"I will interrogate the prisoner" (which is imperfective) is a 
>perfectly true reading of {qama' vIyu'}, but right now I'm not 
>interested in this point in how one would translate Klingon to 
>English, just in how the simple present tense is inappropriate to 
>use for concrete instances of actions, to show later how the same 
>can happen in Klingon.

I was using that to agree with you, to say that you could say that 
there, but it would mean something else.

>>>qaStaHvIS jaj Hoch qama' vIyu' (imperfective)
>>
>>This one surprises me. I would use {vIyu'taH} or {vIyu'lI'} there. Why
>>didn't you?
>
>Because I wanted to express a job assignment or propensity or 
>occasional action, not a never-ending interrogation session.

Okay I didn't carry the context you specified earlier far enough. I'm 
totally happy with {qaStaHvIS jaj Hoch qama' vIyu'} for something 
like "I interrogate prisoners all day long."  Given the context that 
there's one prisoner who gets interrogated a lot and we're not 
talking about a particular interrogation session, then yep, I'm good 
with {qaStaHvIS jaj Hoch qama' vIyu'}. A job description, as you say.

>If I wanted to indicate a never-ending interrogation session, -taH 
>or -lI' would have been needed, but then it would have been an 
>interrogation whose flow in time was being described as continuous, 
>rather than any other the other meanings.

I'm not sure that it has to be never ending, just that what is being 
described is the session, not its completion. jaj Hoch qama' 
vIyu'lI'. Hoch De' vISuqta' 'e' wuqDI' ra'wI'wI', qama' vIHoHta' 'ej 
'uQ vISopmeH jImejpu'.

DaparHa''a'?

- Qov