She Is Dead

That sentence, "she is dead," should sound odd--like a joke or a pun or an oxymoron. It should sound amusing to hear. If she has died then, having died, there is nothing she is. There is only was. We can conceive of a language in which it is possible to say "she died," but not "she is dead" without a smirk. There may be such a language.

It's impossible to "be" dead. But here's the point: if we can say "she is dead" as naturally as "she died" and understand at the same time that there is on an existential level something truly odd about the sentence, we can infer that language does not absolutely limit our perceptions. Language's limitations has its limits. We retain some ability to perceive beyond what we can articulate.