Why think about travel in grammar? Let us regard our language work until this place in the grammar course. We can use the Present Perfect and reason how we have worked, just as we could reckon how we have traveled.
Here, in subchapter 4.1, we could say we have connected the grammatical time and aspect, or, in words possibly more usual, that we have learned to use the fields of time with variables. Our grammatical time is the PRESENT, the same as our real time, inclusive of all chapter 4 so far.
The Perfect Aspect is not the only way to look back on time. We can say we made our passage and traversed the river of time. We reckoned we were as on a map, we imagined ourselves as in an area, and we compared the Perfect Aspect to a way to a place.
By standard, we can talk the same about places we visited during a trip or journey. We use the Past Simple: our forms are “made”, “traversed”, “reasoned”, “were”, “imagined”, and “compared”.
It is when we want to highlight an activity or faculty with regard {TO} the PRESENT that we use the Present Perfect. Otherwise, we can just stay {ON} our cognitive maps.
In chapter 5, we might say we connected the grammatical time and aspect, or that we learned to use the fields. Chapter 4 may belong with the grammatical PAST: we were on it last week, another past time, or it is cognitively PAST to us.
If we want to sum up on Part 1 entire, we might say we connected the Time and Aspect in chapter 4. We place the matter then on the cognitive ground in the PAST when we were studying.
Otherwise, we could say we have used the fields with variables. The regard will depend on how relevant we think the matter is to our real-time PRESENT, and if it belongs with a PRESENT cognitive ground.
If someone is curious or wants to join the course, we might say — about the same language matter — we will have connected the grammatical time and aspect by chapter 5.
This is why the grammar course is a “travel in grammar”. We can speak about the same language matter with various forms of grammar, whereas the matter does not go change places in the course book or anywhere at all, while we flexibly express our view.
We may picture this grammar journey thinking if we go “uphill” or things become easier as we know more.
Language does not require extraordinary talents. Our motto is Bruce Derwing saying that standard intellect is talent enough for good language skills:
No other, special mechanisms or secret abilities are necessary for learning language than learning anything else.
Language workout can be pleasure if we learn to choose between the Simple, Progressive, and Perfect as cognitive variables in real time.
There is some grammar in all human thought. Eternal things as well, if we do, we regard from our real-time PRESENT. The grammatical reference is yet silent. We do not say, now I use the Present Simple … We do not verbalize our Aspect and other grammatical devices, whether we use classic or generative grammar.
Our variables work in the deep of our language structures, not on the surface. Saying, We are IN the mountains, we use the cognitive variable {ON}.
5. Own paths with time
We decide if we affirm, ask a question, or deny. The theory strawberry and Mind Practice can be of help.
Appendix 1. The verb
We can say the infinitive on its own is person and time neutral or objective, providing ancillary time.