"She gave me a bag of fruit."
Translation:她给了我一袋水果。
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1706
There is no strict definition. Usually 一袋 is an open bag and 一包 is a closed bag, but it may vary.
- 1706
Duolingo is trying to build an equivalence between 了 and English past tense, which is not true. I have no strong objection except that they should make a remark it's a simplified model for easier learning.
Both with 了 and without 了 can be a good sentence. Just an isolated sentence like this is insufficient to tell it is needed or not. Basically, just a description of the action does not require 了; to indicate a change of state of facts or the resultant state of facts due to the action, we need 了.
But wouldn't receiving a bag of fruit represent a change of state, though? Would the 了 therefore be necessary?
The explanation above is a bit off.
verb + 了 means bounded action. It can be bounded because you count how many times it happened, or because you say that it preceded something else.
sentence + 了 means currently relevant situation. Usually it's reporting on a past change of state that is relevant, but it can also describe realizing that something is relevant, apart from it changing.
verb + 了 can only mean change of state when the verb is last in the sentence.
But no, it's not a past tense marker either, and Duolingo should stop trying to treat it like one.
Reference: Li and Thompson, Mandarin Chinese: A functional reference grammar.
I was very much in doubt whether the 了 should maybe come later in the sentence to indicate closed action, could that be the case at all?
It isn't. Duolingo is trying to pretend that 了 means past tense and past tense means 了. They overlap, but they're not the same.
But that's not the whole story though, is it? Sometimes when there's a clause or something after the verb, the 了 is after the clause or whatever.
