[Tlhingan-hol] Translating the past

[Gaerfindel]

On 4/12/2014 10:57 PM, SuStel wrote:
> On 4/12/2014 10:43 PM, Bellerophon, modeler wrote:
>> Could one not say {wa'leS ghaH HoHlu'pu'}, indicating that by
>> tomorrow he will have gotten himself killed? This sentence uses
>> perfective but not in any past sense, Klingon cultural attitudes toward
>> counting one's chickens notwithstanding. If grammar allows such a
>> construction, it would divorce -pu' and -ta' from any connection with
>> the past, except insofar as the past is more somewhat more certain than
>> the future.
>
> It could certainly be used for that. -pu' and -ta' are not connected 
> to the PAST, they are connected to TENSE, in that their perfect usage 
> tells us that an event occurs prior to the time context. In your 
> sentence the time context is "tomorrow," and the killing takes place 
> prior to tomorrow. That's tense, even if it's not PAST tense. It's 
> future perfect tense.
>
> I can't think of a way that this would make sense with a perfective 
> aspect, since as of today tomorrow's killing is not completed as a 
> whole unit.
>
For some reason an ancient saying comes to mind: *requvmoH maHeghrupbogh 
maH'e'.* /We who are about to die salute you.

/~quljIb
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