#dormivi

I found this post in which someone had an issue with a verb form in one of my memes:

http://latindiscussion.com/forum/latin/perfect-vs-imperfect-tense.18138/

Here is the meme:

The person thought that dormiebam should be dormivi.

He was not convinced by my explanations and gave an explanation for his view. Here is the most relevant point: “I'm seeing the sleeping from the present and, therefore, the action is completed to me.” Sure, but the fact that the action was completed from one’s present-time point of view has nothing to do with the continuous nature of the verb during the relevant time.

Fortunately, the explanations of the differences between the imperfect and perfect tenses given by a certain Pacis puella show the cogency of my use of the imperfect tense: the imperfect tense is a “line” and the perfect tense is a “dot.” Here is how it works when applied to my meme: the dormiebam is the imperfect-tense “line” and the per totum diem is collateral with that line. At no point during that per totum diem would you find the perfect-tense “dot.” The dot would be somewhere outside the per totum diem period. Thus, this line-dot analogy makes it clear why dormiebam is appropriate.

There are semantic issues with using dormivi, anyway:

Per totum diem dormiebam is used to render the English sentence “I slept all day” because it has the sense of “I was sleeping throughout the day.” This is actually the intended meaning.

Per totum diem dormivi, however, makes it sound like, throughout the day, I stopped sleeping. This is not the intended meaning!