Teacher Discussion Forums

susie · Joined: 27 Mar 2006 Posts: 2

The email will be sent out tomorrow.

fluffyhamster · Posted: Thu May 26, 2011 4:27 pm Post subject:

Many teachers, and some relatively informal books, would call that the "future passive" tense, and the term has admittedly become a reasonably convenient shorthand. It is however technically-speaking not really correct, but I hesitate to bore you with the details because I am not sure you'll be up for reading them. (Briefly though, modal verbs aren't a true/full part of the verb inflections of English, so one should really call such a construction as 'The email will be sent [out] tomorrow' a "modalized passive" or somesuch).

Anyway, here are some previous and more detailed related discussions if you are interested:
http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewtopic.php?p=43934#43934
http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?p=899206#899206
http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewtopic.php?p=43962#43962
http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?p=714280#714280

susie · Joined: 27 Mar 2006 Posts: 2

Please be on time.

The students came to class on time.

She is on time.

fluffyhamster · Posted: Fri May 27, 2011 9:39 am Post subject:

I'm not inclined to just keep on pumping out answers, Susie, especially for no thanks at all. And for all I know you could be a trainee teacher (e.g. doing a CELTA) who should really be learning at least some of this stuff for yourself! (Mind you, if you do have a try and really are stumped, come back and plead a little and I suppose I'll relent and tell you the answers Wink

).

fluffyhamster · Posted: Sat May 28, 2011 7:03 pm Post subject:

Aww, alright, here are the answers then:

Please be on time = Not so much to do with tense as mood, this is the IMPERATIVE. (Look up 'mood', then 'imperative', then finally 'indicative' in the following grammar glossary: http://folk.uio.no/hhasselg/terms.html . Note especially the following sentences from the latter two entries respectively: The imperative verb form (identical to the base form of the verb) is finite, although it does not vary for tense, aspect, or person/number. And: The indicative verb form differs from the others [= other moods - FH] in varying for tense and aspect, and in showing grammatical concord with the subject in the present tense).

The students came to class on time = Past tense (of the verb 'come').

She is on time = Present tense (of the verb 'be', inflected/in the form appropriate for the 3rd person singular subject).