Aspects vs. Tenses in an All-Out Grudge Match! (was ArtyomKouzminykh; Answ

artabanos@mail.utexas.edu writes:
>No, not really.  Think of it this way:  aspect is (often) like a relative
>form
>of tense. Aspect refers to time, but not any one particular time.  For
>example,
>the English "simple present tense" is really a mixture of aspect and
>tense, because
>its main use (now) is to indicate habitual action that is happening now.
>For habitual
>actions that occurred in the past but are ambiguous as to whether they
>still occur,
>we use another helping verb, "used to".
As we say in slang here, "my bad" (sorry about that!) :). I thought deep
and hard, and the aspect really is like tense. Thanks for the
clarification. You are right in the useage, In Tagalog (At least the
little i learned), for things that have happened, and have a definite time
they stopped occuring, we use completed. For things that happened in the
past yet are still going on, continuing. For things we are going to do, we
use the contemplated.

But, we still do use the adverbs of time to express other tenses. I think
for the equivalent of  the imperfect we combine an adverb of time that
denotes past, plus continuing, to say "back then, i was cooking blah blah
blah...." . I'm not really sure though, ahhh if only Kristian were around
, he could clarify this situation for me, but he seems busy :).




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     "Raw to the floor like reservoir dogs"  - A.V. Helden
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