It's "true/false" or "depends" time agai

[Stephen Jones]

Why on earth do we have to get into all this confusion about scheduled facts and the past being factual and not the future?

The answer is quite simple. The tense is called the past simple because one, indeed its most common, use is to describe events that happened in a time frame in the past. Saves a lot of dubious philosophical waffle about things in the past being factual but things in the future not being so.

If the present simple is used for scheduled facts and the past simple is not why do we say:
The Flying Scotsman left London for Edimburgh at seven in the evening sharp every day for fifty-five years.

[LarryLatham]

Who said Past Simple forms cannot be used for scheduled events? I don't recall reading that anywhere around here, and for certain I didn't say it.

Stephen, you can believe whatever you want to believe about verb forms and remoteness and the rest of it. You'll have a lot of company, as I think many will agree with you that Past Simple is called Past Simple because its most common use is for events in past time. Fair enough. You've made up your mind. I won't be joining you though. My mind is made up too. I like the way Michael Lewis sums it up better than your way. I've already explained my reasons. So let's just agree to leave it here to die gently. I don't want to get into a shouting match, and doubt that you do either. There are other things you and I agree on; we'll just focus on those.

Larry Latham

[revel]

Good morning all.

Don't feel on the defensive, but would like to reply to Larry before this thing dies its quiet death and most of these discussions do.

I guess in that paragraph that you quoted, I should have put "this" in bold, that is:

"In this exercise, the continuous....the simple present...." That means that this particular exercise is focused on recognizing each of the kinds of sentences offered and practicing the use of one or the other of the verb forms in each of these sentences so as to recognize them when they might appear (or will appear) en every day conversation.

My vote for simple explanations is because I'd rather not give them at all. Why, just the other day, while everyone was complaining about having to sit through an hour listening to the teacher (not me, of course, my team-teaching partner in an adult class) explain the second conditional, Belen spoke up saying that she found the explanation wonderful. I said, well, fine, perhaps you enjoy grammatical explanations, but are you able to improvise a second conditional sentence for me? "Of course" she spouted, but of course, she was totally unable to even get the sentence started, despite having listened now for over three hours to the explanations, her use is nill.

But, well, I've explained what I do in class and what my objectives are. The sad thing is that in about 50% of my classes I have to reinforce those silly, generalized and full of exceptions rules because if I don't the kids will put the right answer on their school test and their non-native teacher who has told them that it is "speak to" and not "speak with" (since it is hablar con, that is "with" if you translate the preposition directly to English) will count the answer wrong even though it represents a valid exception to the rule learned in class.

Down with explanations, Up with practical practice!!

Thanks, Larry, for your comments, as always, quite welcome.

peace,
revel.

[Andrew Patterson]

My only confusion is about the catenatives, which I wholly do not understand...but that's my problem.

More simply in this case, the modals, and verbs followed by:
1. gerunds, or
2. to+infinitive.

As far as I can tell, the future is not expressed by:
3. verbs followed by the object and bare infinitive, and
4. verbs followed by the object, to+infinitive.

Examples of verbs followed by gerunds which express the future are:
"Be on the point of", and
"Be on the verge of".

Examples of verbs followed by to+infinitive which express the future are:
"Be",
"Be about",
"Be bound", and
"Be going".

You will notice that in these cases nothing is actually done by the catenative, it does nothing except overlay its mood/modality on the following verb.

This can be compared with "stop" for instance, where in addition to this overlay of mood/modality:
5. Somebody/something indeed stops (when followed by to+infinitive), or
6. Is stopped (when followed by a gerund.)

ie an action actually happens.

[Stephen Jones]

Teh point is Larry that the concept of a past time frame is necessary to explain certain uses of the past simple.

To attempt to deny this simply results in ever greater confusion.

To say that the past time frame fails to explain many uses of the past simple and that those uses can most economically be explained by the concept of remoteness, which is sometning I will wholeheartedly agree with, is not the same as to try and pretend the past time frame has no importance.

[Andrew Patterson]

To say that the past time frame fails to explain many uses of the past simple and that those uses can most economically be explained by the concept of remoteness, which is sometning I will wholeheartedly agree with, is not the same as to try and pretend the past time frame has no importance.

I'm sure that Larry will answer for himself, but remoteness in time is just another way of saying something is really in the past. Other types of remoteness have nothing to do with time. You can choose to view it as remoteness in time or really the past. For once since they amount to the same thing, it simply doesn't matter which way you choose to think about it.

[LarryLatham]

Perhaps it doesn't really matter so much in the end. I like the elegance of remote facts as inclusive of all uses of Past Simple. It's easier to wrap your mind around it. It has great didactic advantage in that it offers a single purpose for Past Simple forms, even if that purpose can take more than one particular configuration. It avoids the terribly confusing (to students) catalog approach to learning English grammar, in which students feel they must memorize endless lists of possible uses for endless lists of verbs, infinitives, tenses, aspects, gerunds, objects, subjects, numbers, and on and on and on. Of course, now I am being critical of a whole approach, rather than just a single part of it, but adoption of elegant, simple, exception-free (or at least exception-lean) principles in the study of grammar seems to be an improvement over what is done now in so many grammar classrooms. Revel's story about his colleague's hour long explanation of second-conditional forms is a case in point. Most students find it confusing, not to mention boring. I find it unnecessary as well.

Stephen is right that it works, and is not misleading, to tell students that Past Simple forms can be explained either as referring to past time events, or to facts about which the speaker feels remote for some reason (which can be garnered from context). But to me that's like telling students that sometimes it's six, but on the other hand other times it's half-a dozen. There is no muddled thinking in including past time within the umbrella of remoteness. Why not take advantage of the elegance?

Larry Latham

[metal56]

Why on earth do we have to get into all this confusion about scheduled facts and the past being factual and not the future?

The answer is quite simple. The tense is called the past simple because one, indeed its most common, use is to describe events that happened in a time frame in the past. Saves a lot of dubious philosophical waffle about things in the past being factual but things in the future not being so.

If the present simple is used for scheduled facts and the past simple is not why do we say:
The Flying Scotsman left London for Edimburgh at seven in the evening sharp every day for fifty-five years.

The answer is quite simple. The tense is called the past simple because one, indeed its most common, use is to describe events that happened in a time frame in the past.

And that is the most precise answer of why it is called the past simple. But it is an unfortunate name as it can only explain a part of that form's use.

[metal56]

Perhaps it doesn't really matter so much in the end. I like the elegance of remote facts as inclusive of all uses of Past Simple. It's easier to wrap your mind around it. It has great didactic advantage in that it offers a single purpose for Past Simple forms, even if that purpose can take more than one particular configuration. It avoids the terribly confusing (to students) catalog approach to learning English grammar, in which students feel they must memorize endless lists of possible uses for endless lists of verbs, infinitives, tenses, aspects, gerunds, objects, subjects, numbers, and on and on and on. Of course, now I am being critical of a whole approach, rather than just a single part of it, but adoption of elegant, simple, exception-free (or at least exception-lean) principles in the study of grammar seems to be an improvement over what is done now in so many grammar classrooms. Revel's story about his colleague's hour long explanation of second-conditional forms is a case in point. Most students find it confusing, not to mention boring. I find it unnecessary as well.

Stephen is right that it works, and is not misleading, to tell students that Past Simple forms can be explained either as referring to past time events, or to facts about which the speaker feels remote for some reason (which can be garnered from context). But to me that's like telling students that sometimes it's six, but on the other hand other times it's half-a dozen. There is no muddled thinking in including past time within the umbrella of remoteness. Why not take advantage of the elegance?

Larry Latham

Absolutely seconded!

[Stephen Jones]

The point I am trying to make is that if Lewis would only admit that remoteness in time refers to past time frames only then he would avoid all the confusion he goes to trying to prove that remoteness in the future is not really remoteness.

He seems to have a strange fixation with the single "core" explanation.

[LarryLatham]

"The past simple for Past Time"
Perhaps surprisingly, the idea of remoteness is even helpful in looking at the most straightforward uses of the second form. Many uses of this form, of course, refer to Past Time and are what most people would think of as obvious uses of the past tense:
I saw him yesterday.
I knew her years ago. We were at school together.

The second form is used if the speaker sees the action as remote in time. This may seem obvious, but two important points need to be made:

a. This form is only appropriate for remote facts. Next week is in reality as far from Now as last week, but while the objective factuality of the past makes I met her last week possible, the speculative, non-factual quality of the future means that *I met her next week is not possible.

b. We have already noted that it is possible to talk about Past Time without using the "past tense"."

Larry Latham

[Stephen Jones]

a. This form is only appropriate for remote facts. Next week is in reality as far from Now as last week, but while the objective factuality of the past makes I met her last week possible, the speculative, non-factual quality of the future means that *I met her next week is not possible.

And Lewis is obliged to resort to this pseudo-philosophical balderdash because he is not prepared to admit that the past simple is only used for remoteness in time in the past and not the future.

If the future was speculative and non-factual we could never use the present simple tense to refer to it.

[LarryLatham]

And Lewis is obliged to resort to this pseudo-philosophical balderdash because he is not prepared to admit that the past simple is only used for remoteness in time in the past and not the future.

I guess when you read it, Stephen, you get something different from it than I do. When I read it, it says:

This form is only appropriate for remote facts. Next week is in reality as far from Now as last week, but while the objective factuality of the past makes I met her last week possible, the speculative, non-factual quality of the future means that *I met her next week is not possible.

That means, at least as far as my feeble mind can discern, that the past simple form is only used for remote time in the past. That remote time in the future, while certainly remote, is not appropriate for use of past simple form. Isn't this what you're campaigning for?

I'm not understanding why this is not clear to you, Stephen, from exactly what Lewis says. Perhaps you see something that I don't. If so, maybe that gives rise to your insistence that Lewis is engaging in "pseudo-philosophical balderdash". To my mind it seems straight-ahead and simple. Can you please explain why you don't see it that way? What is pseudo? What is balderdash? I don't get it.

If the future was speculative and non-factual we could never use the present simple tense to refer to it.

...and we don't, except when we refer to scheduled events, which we consider factual. It's not a very great leap.

Larry Latham

[Stephen Jones]

Lewis is going round the block to avoid saying that the past simple tense is used for the past time frame. As you rightly say, he ends up by saying it but it would be much simpler to miss out the intermediate steps, about speculative futures and scheduled facts and all the other rubbish.

The truth is much simpler. There are as far as English is concerned two time frames. One is the past time frame and the other is the present time frame, which by default includes the future.


For simple facts in the past time frame we use the past simple; for simple facts in the present time frame (which includes the future) we use the past simple.

It is a matter of time (admitedly subjective and in relation to the moment of speaking) that indicates we must say
I saw John five minutes ago
but
I move into my new house at the end of next year.

You can even reasonably say that the Past time frame is the only remote time frame, since the present time frame includes now.

This provides a much simpler view of matters than Lewis himself proposes. Presumably he is so concerned about attacking the strawman of tense is equivalent to objective time that he refuses to give time its due place.

[metal56]

If the future was speculative and non-factual we could never use the present simple tense to refer to it.

I go to the doctor next week.

The only thing that is future there is "next week". The rest is neither speculative nor non-factual.