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alongway
Joined: 02 Jan 2012
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 Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2014 3:12 am Post subject: |
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| schwa wrote: |
"What are you doing tomorrow?"
"I'm playing tennis."
"I'll play tennis."
"I'm going to play tennis."
Same, same, & same. Clear meaning, all understood to mean the same thing, all grammatically correct.
T-J's list is interesting & shows natural preferences in different situations, but in fact you can swap in either other form in every example & it still works without changing the meaning in any substantial way.
The distinctions that do arise are far too subtle to have any place in a curriculum that isnt aimed at virtually fluent students. English grammar already presents enough obstacles to second-language learners. This neednt be one of them. |
I don't think it's that subtle if you say:
I'm going to play tennis (indicating a plan has been made and you intend to follow through on it)
vs
hmmm... I will play tennis tomorrow
the meaning changes substantially. In the second sentence it might be clear that the speaker just made this plan or is open to having something else suggested to them. I guess if you want to pretend everyone talks like a dictionary you might not see an obvious difference. |
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The Cosmic Hum
Joined: 09 May 2003
Location: Sonic Space
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| Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2014 4:24 am Post subject: |
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| alongway wrote: |
| schwa wrote: |
"What are you doing tomorrow?"
"I'm playing tennis."
"I'll play tennis."
"I'm going to play tennis."
Same, same, & same. Clear meaning, all understood to mean the same thing, all grammatically correct.
T-J's list is interesting & shows natural preferences in different situations, but in fact you can swap in either other form in every example & it still works without changing the meaning in any substantial way.
The distinctions that do arise are far too subtle to have any place in a curriculum that isnt aimed at virtually fluent students. English grammar already presents enough obstacles to second-language learners. This neednt be one of them. |
I don't think it's that subtle if you say:
I'm going to play tennis (indicating a plan has been made and you intend to follow through on it)
vs
hmmm... I will play tennis tomorrow
the meaning changes substantially. In the second sentence it might be clear that the speaker just made this plan or is open to having something else suggested to them. I guess if you want to pretend everyone talks like a dictionary you might not see an obvious difference. |
Except that isn't what he is saying.
And the 'difference' is not obvious.
It depends on 'how' it is said. Not on 'what' is said.
There are countless ways to express the same meaning.
And countless ways to say the exact same thing with different meanings.
Suggesting that prescriptive grammar dictates meaning is antiquated to say the least.
Interesting debate...and the heavy-weights are here.
Nice to see.
Raewon...you have ring-side seats...enjoy the show.
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2014 4:35 am Post subject: |
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| alongway wrote: |
I don't think it's that subtle if you say:
I'm going to play tennis (indicating a plan has been made and you intend to follow through on it)
vs
hmmm... I will play tennis tomorrow
the meaning changes substantially. In the second sentence it might be clear that the speaker just made this plan or is open to having something else suggested to them. |
Yes, that's true, but it's true because you added the "Hmmm..." in the second sentence, not because you changed "going to" to "will." "Hmmm... I'm going to play tennis tomorrow," gives the same impression, at least to me. I think schwa has the right of it.
| alongway wrote: |
| I guess if you want to pretend everyone talks like a dictionary you might not see an obvious difference. |
The irony here is that it's actually the people insisting there's some prescriptive grammatical difference between "will" and "going to" which give me the impression of thinking language works like a reference text. |
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alongway
Joined: 02 Jan 2012
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| Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2014 5:59 am Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| alongway wrote: |
I don't think it's that subtle if you say:
I'm going to play tennis (indicating a plan has been made and you intend to follow through on it)
vs
hmmm... I will play tennis tomorrow
the meaning changes substantially. In the second sentence it might be clear that the speaker just made this plan or is open to having something else suggested to them. |
Yes, that's true, but it's true because you added the "Hmmm..." in the second sentence, not because you changed "going to" to "will." "Hmmm... I'm going to play tennis tomorrow," gives the same impression, at least to me. I think schwa has the right of it.
| alongway wrote: |
| I guess if you want to pretend everyone talks like a dictionary you might not see an obvious difference. |
The irony here is that it's actually the people insisting there's some prescriptive grammatical difference between "will" and "going to" which give me the impression of thinking language works like a reference text. |
Because there is and texts teach it. I'd consider Cambridge to be fairly authoritative when it comes to English and their English grammar in use certainly teaches "be going to do" to have that meaning. In fact, for reference, lesson 21 specifically states "Do not use will for things that you've already arranged or decided to do", it also states that Will is used when you decided to do something at the time of speaking, which is exactly like the example I gave.
This is the way I've used the language my whole life, as have those around me. Of course there is some geographical and educational variation that might come in to play here, but I'll take cambridge's confirmation of life's experience over random internet user 8472. |
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EZE
Joined: 05 May 2012
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| Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2014 8:45 am Post subject: |
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| edwardcatflap wrote: |
So if you asked someone what their plans for the weekend were and they replied
'I will visit my grandmother' or 'I'll visit my grandmother', you wouldn't think that sounds a little strange? |
To me, they have the same meaning, but I have a tendency to make the answer mirror the question. If someone asks, "What are you going to do this weekend?" I tend to reply, "I'm going to visit my grandmother." If someone asks, "What will you do this weekend?" I tend to reply, "I'll visit my grandmother." |
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Stain
Joined: 08 Jan 2014
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| Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2014 10:15 am Post subject: |
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| There's no difference in everyday conversation. However, in grammar, the difference is "going to" means you are planning to do just that. "Will" means, plans or no plans, by god, it's going to happen. Notice I said "going to" because people can't predict the future. |
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T-J
Joined: 10 Oct 2008
Location: Seoul EunpyungGu Yeonsinnae
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| Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2014 4:01 pm Post subject: |
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I'd like to throw one more word into the mix because the waters are clearly not muddy enough:
Shall
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2014 4:18 pm Post subject: |
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| alongway wrote: |
Because ... texts teach it. I'd consider Cambridge to be fairly authoritative when it comes to English and their English grammar ... |
This is what it all really comes down to. Some grammar-prescriptivist at some point got it in his head that this ought to be an absolute distinction, got it published, and it started circulating, and now a fair number of people will simply accept it on authority (most especially our overly-pedantic Korean students, unfortunately).
You say you've used language exactly as the Cambridge text dictates here your "whole life." Well, I don't know if that's true or not (it would be pretty incredible if your experiences with English in this regard absolutely and perfectly coincided with a grammar text on such a questionable and subtle point, and even more incredible if you could remember with absolute precision that it was so), but I do know that that hasn't been my experience based simply upon the present moment, and evidently I'm not alone in that here. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2014 4:25 pm Post subject: |
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| Stain wrote: |
| There's no difference in everyday conversation. However, in grammar, the difference is "going to" means you are planning to do just that. |
So when I say, "It's going to rain," I'm suggesting the cosmos has a plan to rain? When I say in terror, "Oh my God we are going to die," I'm saying that I'm planning to die, as if it were some intention instead of a grim acknowledgment? Of course not, yet those are both entirely reasonable, natural sentences. |
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edwardcatflap
Joined: 22 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2014 4:25 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| This is what it all really comes down to. Some grammar-prescriptivist at some point got it in his head that this ought to be an absolute distinction, got it published, and it started circulating, and now a fair number of people will simply accept it on authority (most especially our overly-pedantic Korean students, unfortunately). |
I'd have thought nowadays they base grammar distinctions like this on text corpuses with millions of examples of everyday speech.
| Quote: |
So when I say, "It's going to rain," I'm suggesting the cosmos has a plan to rain? When I say in terror, "Oh my God we are going to die," I'm saying that I'm planning to die, as if it were some intention instead of a grim acknowledgment? Of course not, yet those are both entirely reasonable, natural sentences. |
'Going to' also has the function of prediction based on physical evidence, like your two examples. It's a different usage. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2014 4:39 pm Post subject: |
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| edwardcatflap wrote: |
| I'd have thought nowadays they base grammar distinctions like this on text corpuses with millions of examples of everyday speech. |
Millions of examples of every day speech would include people who recognize the interchangeability of these terms though (unless they were cherry picked with the utmost caution). If "going to" is used 75% of the time in a given circumstance and "will" is used 25% of the time, does that make one wrong, or simply less commonly used? Or even a 95%/5% split? I don't think so, at least not necessarily (though there might be room for laying down regional distinctions if the minority which used it alternatively were all from a given country). Yet authoritative "Lesson 21" lays down an absolute mandate.
| edwardcatflap wrote: |
| 'Going to' also has the function of prediction based on physical evidence, like your two examples. It's a different usage. |
Yet I can just as easily substitute will in those sentences without changing the meaning. "Based on the evidence, I think it's going to rain at 3:00." "Based on the evidence, I think it'll rain at 3:00." "When you open that door, you're going to see a very messy room." "When you open that door, you'll see a very messy room." "I'm going to go to the park, then have some ice cream." "I'll go to the park, then have some ice cream." I don't believe that outside of the context of this conversation anyone here would feel the slightest sense of incongruity at these sentences being used interchangeably, nor even think there was any real difference in the subtleties of the ideas being expressed (absent any change in intonation anyway). |
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edwardcatflap
Joined: 22 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2014 4:52 pm Post subject: |
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| If someone sees a black cloud in the sky and points to it, they're most likely to say ' it's going to rain', not 'it will rain'. Manchester United are 2-0 up on the final day of the season do their fans start singing we will win the league? ' I agree it's a slight distinction but it's there nonetheless. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2014 5:01 pm Post subject: |
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| But that's my point , it's "most likely." That's a fair, descriptive statement. We do not need to construct artificial grammatical mandates to acknowledge that certain ideas are far more often articulated in one grammatically-correct fashion rather than another grammatically-correct fashion. |
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Fuzzy_Dunlop
Joined: 18 Jun 2014
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| Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2014 5:39 pm Post subject: |
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Futurity can make one's head hurt 
A: Hey, Fuzzy. So, what's the plan for tomorrow?
B: Well, I'm working (a) tomorrow but it shouldn't be a problem. I finish (b) at five, then I'll head (c) home to shower and change. I think I'm going to (d) get the car washed, so I'll pick you up (e) around seven. |
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edwardcatflap
Joined: 22 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2014 5:40 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
But that's my point , it's "most likely." That's a fair, descriptive statement. We do not need to construct artificial grammatical mandates to acknowledge that certain ideas are far more often articulated in one grammatically-correct fashion rather than another grammatically-correct fashion.
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At some point you have to decide what structures you're going to teach non native speakers. In fact most grammar sections in books say things like 'this structure is usually used for such and such and so on. |
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