tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Mar 04 00:03:35 1999
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Re: Placement of aspect suffixes
- From: [email protected]
- Subject: Re: Placement of aspect suffixes
- Date: Thu, 4 Mar 1999 03:02:54 EST
In a message dated 3/3/1999 8:39:13 PM US Mountain Standard Time,
[email protected] writes:
<< ja' peHruS:
>I definitely should not have put (perfective) inside parentheses right after
>saying "past tense." There is no way they mean the same thing. I meant to
>say: When Mandarin uses {-wan} "finish," it comes across in English as
"past
>tense" and in Slavonic languages and dialects as "perfective."
1: There is no way perfective and past tense mean the same thing.
2: The Mandarin "-wan" is translated as either past tense or perfective.
You don't see a contradiction here? >>
===============
No, I don't see a contradiction here. I see a mis-reading. Your statement #2
is a mis-quote, outright. What I said is: When Mandarin uses {-wan}
"finish," it comes across in English as "past tense" and in Slavonic languages
and dialects as "perfective."
Please carefully read that this does not mean that Mandarin uses {-wan} as
both past tense and perfective simultaneously. This means that Mandarin uses
{-wan}; then, an English-speaker looks at the sentences and sees "tense" while
a speaker of Baltic-Slavonic languages looks at the same sentences and sees
"perfective."
peHruS