[Tlhingan-hol] Klingon Word of the Day: tey'be'

[Alan Anderson]

On Mon, Mar 7, 2016 at 1:24 PM, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:
>
> I don't follow you. They promoted her. The act of promoting is complete.
> They are no longer promoting her because the promoting is finished. That's
> the perfective.
>
> It's not perfective in English because English uses past tense for that sort
> of thing.

"They promoted her" is complete *right now*, and "They are no longer
promoting her" *right now*, because of the past tense wording. I am
pretty sure you don't equate English past tense with Klingon
perfective, but it seems to me like that's what you're trying to do
here. If a reasonably harmless {ngugh} is added to get {ngugh lumum}
"They promoted her at that time," would you still want to see a
perfective suffix on the verb?

I can see wanting to add the perfective meaning if you interpret the
sentence as describing the present state of things instead of as part
of a narrative of past events, but there's no time context given that
would support *insisting* on that.

-- ghunchu'wI'