tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Nov 28 12:14:33 1997
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Re: bIQ'a' Doq bIngDaq
>Date: Sat, 15 Nov 1997 08:34:14 -0800 (PST)
>From: "Anthony.Appleyard" <[email protected]>
>
> Re {-pu'}: I realize that I fell into an error of using it like the English
>past tense. I was perhaps also misled by my experience with Arabic and Hebrew,
>which like Klingon have an imperfective (yaktubu = yikhtov = ghItlh) and a
>perfective (kataba = kathav = ghItlhpu'), but seem to use the perfective
>continuously in narrating past events.
Even by Biblical times, the perfective in Hebrew started to become a simple
past tense (though that progressed much further in later times), and the
imperfective a future tense. In Modern Hebrew they have become almost
completely tenses and not aspects, with the participle covering present
tense (though the aspect nature is still apparent in some cases and
constructions). It's important to watch for it in Klingon, though.
~mark