Linguists are often found in funny situations like this where “learning about the language” typically means learning and analyzing the grammar, while learning to speak the language is a secondary thing, which might or might not happen (depending on the time spent in the field).
One caveat to this post is that I don’t mean to diminish in any way the help of everyone I worked with in Vanuatu. There were actually quite some people interested in the perfect aspect, and even those who did not know what it was were incredibly helpful! For those who are interested in why I keep mentioning perfect aspect in my posts, I will soon post another text explaining in a non-technical way what is perfect and what I discovered about it in Nafsan during my PhD.
Ana, I’m doing three lang doc guest lectures next week. Would it be OK if I put your comic in one of my PPTs? I’ll be sure the name credit at the bottom shows. ~Brenda
Hi Brenda, yes of course, I’m so glad you like it! 🙂 If you need a higher resolution of the picture, let me know, I can send you a version with better resolution.