ok, thank you for explaining this. it is not that I have anything against the {qaStaHvIS}; it is rather the fact, that many times during writing I find myself writing the {qaStaHvIS} again and again. i wish there was an alternate expression, in order to be able to avoid repeating the same phrase time and again. qunnoH ghoghwIj HablI'vo' vIngeHta' On 8 Nov 2016 2:17 pm, "André Müller" <esperantist@gmail.com> wrote:

A "time stamp" only marks a point in time, you can use words meaning "today", "on Monday", "in 2 years", etc. But in {DIS law'} you are not talking about a reference point in time, but about a long duration during which you did something. So {qaStaHvIS ...} is the correct option.

Now you might argue that "in 2 years" and "(during) many years" both refer to quite broad time spans and not necessarily to *points* in time, but for "in 2 years" there is no duration specified, while "many years" explicitly refers to a duration.

{ben law'} 'many years ago' would stand alone without a {qaStaHvIS} before it.

- André

2016-11-08 11:51 GMT+01:00 mayqel qunenoS <mihkoun@gmail.com>:

...

Assume I want to write: "many years I've been tickling the cat".

If I stop and think, what most people here are expecting to see, I then I would write:

{qaStaHvIS DIS law' vIghro' vIqotlh}.

However, I really can't see the reason why I cannot write:

{DIS law', vIghro' vIqotlh}.

Is this wrong ? And if it is, could someone be so kind as to explain why ?

qunnoH jan puqloD _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org

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