Interesting use of "Future Perfect Tense" form

Duncan Powrie · Post by **Duncan Powrie** » Wed Mar 24, 2004 3:45 am

Aha, Larry, yes, you are definitely online at the same time now, so I'll stop posting and just let you read what I've said. See you tomorrow again, maybe! You'll hopefully see that I realized what you meant, and am now "happy" with most if not all of what you wrote!

Duncan Powrie · Post by **Duncan Powrie** » Wed Mar 24, 2004 3:51 am

Good to see we are still friends, Larry. I LOVE you <<sniffle>>

. RIGHT I really am off now because I don't want to get addicted to this.

By the way, it's not so much a process of "holding you to high standards", but one of "exposing my ignorance", but if the latter helps you improve in some unimaginable way, then I'm glad to have been of "help".

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Wed Mar 31, 2004 11:25 pm

It isn't habit, it isn't prediction, it is "will" for logical deductions.

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Wed Mar 31, 2004 11:32 pm

They will have arrived on time.

From my knowledge of the time they left, the length of the journey, weather conditions, his/her driving habit, I logically deduce...

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"(..) even so they will have experienced weather that was at least as bad as a modern Siberian winter."

Pragmatic and other knowledge helps me deduce.

LarryLatham · Post by **LarryLatham** » Thu Apr 01, 2004 12:19 am

Precisely, metal56.

I would only add, as a reminder, that use of will means that the user is implicitly not representing his deduction as fact.

In view of all this, presuming you accept its validity, we will have to amend our understanding of will in verb phrases:

1. Will is not a "Future Tense".

2. Use of will does not automatically place an action in future time.

Larry Latham

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Thu Apr 01, 2004 8:54 am

Hi Larry

Yes, I thought about that amendment also:

modal factuality.

And ain't this the truth:

<He certainly could have said, "...even so they would have experienced...", where would has the same meaning as will, with the added overlay of remoteness, which clearly could be justified in this case. But he chose will because he did not wish to add the element of remoteness, and I believe he chose it consciously and with deliberation. I doubt it was a mistake. Nothing about English grammar forces him to choose one way or the other...it is his choice as the producer. But it sure got my attention. >

He would have been a bit of a plonker to have used something as fluffy as "would have" when "will have" has much more commitment and the logic of the context demands it.

It was freezing on the mountain last night, I hope the climbers were OK.

They will have had to dig a snow cave, that's for sure.

They would have had to dig a snow hole, that's for sure.

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In ‘Forever and Ever Amen’ Joe Pemberton describes the demolition of a row of houses in Fairlawn Street. The people who lived there will have had to move out and will have had to go and live somewhere else. It was the end of that community, as it had been known. He also describes the rebuilding programme in Moss Side at that time and the hopes that people had for the future of the area.

http://www.manchester.gov.uk/libraries/ ... de/ws3.htm

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I know that the coaches left Penzance at 3am this morning. Some of you from Wales will have had to leave your homes even earlier than that and cared for animals even before that to get here.

http://www.huntfacts.com/Mallalieu%20sp ... 6-9-00.htm

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And there is no conditionality in Bryson's deduction:

"If I am correct, they would have experienced..."

Why so pussyfootish? The facts are facts (modal and non-modal), no conditionality. Fact, it was bloody cold:

I was cold/It will have been cold/It must have been cold etc.

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And don't insult me! Coz I'm a customer:

March 13, 2004
Between approximately 17:30 and 21:00 we were performing diagnostics on our ADSL networks in an attempt to isolate the cause of our current troubles. Customers will have experienced frequent service interruptions during this time. We apologize for the inconvenience this caused.

john martin · Post by **john martin** » Thu Apr 01, 2004 11:46 am

For what it is worth..I think the sentence is correct.."will" is used as an indication of how sure the author is in his supposition. In much the same way as .."The thief was not caught because the police made so much noise with their sirens on arrival"..."Ah, the thief will have heard the noise and run away"

The speaker of the second sentence is sure of his suppostition and so uses will. To use "would" would have had a distancing effect and made his oppinion of his own suppostition seem less sure.The future "tense" is really tricky, argued by many in to non existence.

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Thu Apr 01, 2004 1:14 pm

You're examples don't affect the original quote from Bryson.

if you say "They will have had to dig a snow cave, that's for sure", you are thinking of the mountaineers up the mountain now, if not actually in their snow cave. If you were talking about the first ascent of Everest you would use "would".

The problem with Bryson's "will" is that is is both preceded and followed by a past tense. The "will" doesn't act to make the cold more vivid to us; rather it gives us a quick flash into the present and then straight back into the past.

"Will have had" is correct in your third example, since the Countryside alliance members are before the speaker as she utters the words.

The worksheet you give from Manchester City Council seems to me to be an example of clumsy use of English. It should be "woudl have had". If you look at the excerpts from the book you won't find any such egregious mistakes.

The "customers will have had" suggests that the outage was recent., and has an effect on the present.

LarryLatham · Post by **LarryLatham** » Thu Apr 01, 2004 4:36 pm

You will have to have your opinion I guess, Stephen. I sense you are an ardent believer, and loyalty to your cause will be admired by some. You are, without question, a competent grammarian. But it sounds to me like you're desperately defending a position that has been regularly demolished by other posters here.

Larry Latham

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Fri Apr 02, 2004 11:00 am

Perhaps Larry you could kindly tell me what cause I am defending.

I fail to see how my arguments have been demolished. Everybody is in agreement that 'will have' can be used for events predicted to have taken place in the past, which are considered to have some relationship with the present. Equally everybody is in agreement that you can use a oresent frame of reference to describe events that took place in the past in order to make them more vivid (this happens much more often in certain circumstances than in others).

What is in debate here is the appropriateness of the particular example from Bryson, and your attempt to air brush out the idea of tenses having anything to do with time in pos of your devotion to the cult of St. Michael of Oversimplification.

Al · Post by Al » Fri Apr 02, 2004 11:51 am

What is in debate here is the appropriateness of the particular example from Bryson, and your attempt to air brush out the idea of tenses having anything to do with time

A bit of a strawman, really, Stephen. Nobody here's made that claim, and nor would they. The point is that tense is not always time-referential. Witness our Bryson example - or as you'd prefer not to, something like this:

1) Were you planning to join us later on?

The shift to past is normally seen as a politeness manoeuvre and it would take a fairly inappropriate level of special pleading to foreground the issue of time reference here. Which, though one need hardly state the obvious, is no evidence whatsoever for the vast majority of situations where past progressive does equal time reference.

Al

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Fri Apr 02, 2004 6:24 pm

The analysis of will as Future Tense runs into two very serious problems:

1) It isn't a tense.
2) Its primary semantic characteristic is not future time, as multiple posts here show.

Other than that, Stephen has a really good handle on the situation

LarryLatham · Post by **LarryLatham** » Fri Apr 02, 2004 7:10 pm

Perhaps Larry you could kindly tell me what cause I am defending.

I may be misunderstanding you here, Stephen, and if so, then I apologize for that. But the cumulative pressure of your series of posts in this particular conversational thread makes it seem to me that you are defending a very rigid, and currently discredited, interpretation of the concept of tense. It seems as though you do not hold Michael Lewis's views in high regard, which, of course, is your prerogative. I do, and that is mine. I believe he is an original and independent thinker who has got it right, for the most part. I reference him often because I recognize that his ideas inform mine, and I want him to receive proper credit.

Bryson's sentence appears to many of us here to be not only well formed, but brilliantly conceived (at least in my own view), because it draws out the fundamental meaning of will in masterful precision. You insist that it is an error, and should be changed. That is, of course, also your right, but you are having a hard time getting much agreement here. Whether we agree with you does not make your argument right or wrong, but it ought to cause you to perhaps take another look. There just might be something of value in our views. I have looked at yours, as far as I can understand them, and up to now, remain unconvinced.

Larry Latham

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Sat Apr 03, 2004 4:38 pm

\I have never suggested that "will" was the future tense, so why lolwhites persists I don't know.

Future time is certainly one of its main semantic charactersistics.

you are defending a very rigid, and currently discredited, interpretation of the concept of tense

Perhaps you could tell me what my supposed interpretation is.

Bryson's sentence appears to many of us here to be not only well formed, but brilliantly conceived (at least in my own view), because it draws out the fundamental meaning of will in masterful precision.

What you mean is that at last you've come across something that you can use to back up your point. And perhaps you could be simply journeyman precise and tell us what the "fundamental meaning of will" is. I'll them frame the quote up with similar from Nostradamus, Dr. Atkins, and other self-proclaimed gurus.

LarryLatham · Post by **LarryLatham** » Sat Apr 03, 2004 5:33 pm

\I have never suggested that "will" was the future tense, so why lolwhites persists I don't know.

Well, perhaps the reason he persists is because of statements like this:

Future time is certainly one of its main semantic charactersistics

Lolwhite's point is that future time is not a semantic characteristic of will. It frequently is a logical interpretation of particular wills in particular contexts, but that is not will's fundamental meaning.

And perhaps you could be simply journeyman precise and tell us what the "fundamental meaning of will" is.

(Sigh). From above in these posts:

...will expresses a connection (in the user's momentary judgment) between two sets of data: a first set representing what he knows about an event at the present moment, with a second set which he believes is probably true, based on what he knows now, but about which he cannot be certain because of obvious circumstances. Sometimes (perhaps even often) those circumstances are that the event referred to is in future time, hence the use of will arises accordingly. But there are other reasons why a speaker may not be able to know the facts of an event. He may be physically removed from the event, giving rise to uses such as, They will be home by now.

You frequently complain, Stephen, that people do not read posts carefully. Perhaps you might consider following your own suggestion.

Larry Latham