tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Feb 17 20:42:33 1999

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Re: ma'veq: It's official



In a message dated 2/17/99 8:53:56 PM US Eastern Standard Time,
[email protected] writes:

>  ...the example given in TKD works because both parts of the
>  SAO phrase are in the same tense. What if they aren't? ...
>  If I had wanted to say, "I had thought that the
>  prefixes confuse me"; I would have to leave the suffix off of both parts,
>  making it the wrong tense enirely. 

Klingon has no tenses.  If you're thinking that perfective aspect is the same
as past tense, you'll only get more confused.  It isn't.  

Aspect is independent of time.  Among the tenses of English, the past perfect,
present perfect, and future perfect all have perfective aspect.  {-pu'} and
{-ta'} tell you the perfective aspect, but not the time.

--jey'el



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