thank you very much SuStel and lieven for taking the time to explain all this. perhaps -slowly- I'm beginning to understand the difference between tense and aspect, although -currently-, I feel it is a subtle one. I think the way to go, is try and use aspect in simple sentences and work one's way, from that point up. Another good question though, is this: If I'm writing a passage, which clearly concerns a number of completed events, do I need to repeat the {-pu'} on every verb, or just once or twice suffices ? qunnoq On Mon, Aug 22, 2016 at 8:28 PM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
On 8/22/2016 12:26 PM, Lieven wrote:
Aspect is not mandatory. You wanted to not confuse the students. I tried to keep it simple, suggesting beginenrs avoid aspect until they feel comfortable with it and NOT use it as tense.
Telling students to leave off a suffix that CANNOT be left off when they try to say something that requires it is NOT the correct advice.
Your advice amounts to, "Don't say things that require aspect, so you don't have to use the suffixes."
The correct approach is to understand aspect FIRST, then learn when to use it or not use it. If a student wants to translate, "I wrote a message and then sent it," which is a reasonable thing to want to say, they CANNOT omit aspect. But that's what you told them to do.
-- SuStel http://trimboli.name
_______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org