Interesting use of "Future Perfect Tense" form

[LarryLatham]

I just finished a rather fascinating book this evening, entitled A Short History of Nearly Everything, written by Bill Bryson. Bryson is a bestselling American author of several nonfiction books with a scientific bent. He is, in my view at least, a master of the use of English. An excellent writer.

In the second paragraph on page 458, right in the middle of the page, are these three sentences, talking about weather conditions existing in Europe at the time Cro-Magnons began to encroach upon the territory of Neandertals around 100,000 years ago:

"Temperatures routinely fell to 50 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Polar bears padded across the snowy vales of southern England. Neandertals naturally retreated from the worst of it, but even so they will have experienced weather that was at least as bad as a modern Siberian winter."

He is trying to make his point that the Neandertals were a tough lot.

Look at the third sentence, and notice his use of "Future Perfect Tense" there. He wrote this book in 2003. He is talking about events uncontroversially occuring in past time. Has he got his grammar wrong? Or will we have to take another look at what "Future Perfect Tense" actually means???

Larry Latham

[Al]

HI Larry

There's a bit more to 'will' than expression of future time.

This will be habitual future - nature and anthropology texts are particularly rich sources. Example:

The Arctic tern will fly from the North to the South pole every year on migration

What holds for 'will'-future simple will also hold for other aspects of the 'will'-future, such as the future perfect here described.

BTW, the two uses of 'will' I've appled a wink to can be called (don't ask me what the true accepted term is) the 'logical' future. Conclusion C will follow - so to speak - from premises A and B.

The word 'follow' is interesting here. Though we don't have a true future in any timelines sense, language used to talk about argumentation is regularly locked into a time-metaphor. Lakoff and Johnson's book Philosophy in the Flesh has more on this - a worthwhile read.

Cheers, Al

[Andrew Patterson]

"Temperatures routinely fell to 50 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Polar bears padded across the snowy vales of southern England. Neandertals naturally retreated from the worst of it, but even so they will have experienced weather that was at least as bad as a modern Siberian winter."

This is "will" for predictions. Predictions do not have to be about the future. That said, because it is about the past, I would have been more inclined to write, "would have experienced."

[Al]

Thanks Andrew

I shouldn't have said habitual future but habitual 'will' - indeed it isn't a future at all.

A

[lolwhites]

This is just more evidence (if more were needed) that the fundamental meaning if will is not future time.

[LarryLatham]

Lovely discussion, guys. Indeed you've whetted my appetite. Just what I was hoping for. But I'm hungry for more. For example, Andy, can you elaborate a bit? Why do you think you might have said, "...even so they would have experienced..."?

If Bryson were your student, would you have marked his paper in blue?

Larry Latham.

[Stephen Jones]

All we have here is a writer who gets carried away with his own imaginings and direly needs a proof reader.

He's mixing his tenses: - there's a past tense before "will have" and another one after. It should be "would".

If he wanted to use the future perfect to give a sense of immediacy, the following verb should be present "weather that is as bad as a modern Siberian winter"
or absent
"weather as bad as a modern Siberian winter."

I fail to see why the phrase caught your atention anyway.
"He will have finished by now" is perfectly common., and is a prediction akin to "he must have finished by now".

However we would say "he would have finished by then"

[LarryLatham]

Awww, Stephen, where is your sense of adventure and discovery? Are you really ready to say that Bill Bryson doesn't know how to use English, or that maybe this is a typo that somehow slipped by the editors and proofreaders at Random House?

If he wanted to use the future perfect to give a sense of immediacy, the following verb should be present "weather that is as bad as a modern Siberian winter"

So, I guess that was not his intention, then.

It caught my attention precisely because it is interesting...because it appears in a clause immediately following one with a past tense verb. And because it so clearly refers to a past time event. And because it was written by somebody who is unlikely to have simply made a mistake. Doesn't that peak your curiosity just the tiniest bit? Doesn't that spark an urge to explore? If language were nothing more than a set of rules set down by some "authority" and meant to be slavishly followed forever after, wouldn't that be dull?

Larry Latham

[Andrew Patterson]

Larry,

I don't think I can add anything that you, Al, Lowhites or Steve haven't already said.

Andy.

[LarryLatham]

Well, Andy, I was curious about something you did say. You said:

This is "will" for predictions. Predictions do not have to be about the future. That said, because it is about the past, I would have been more inclined to write, "would have experienced."

Without really wanting to put you on the spot, Andy, I was just wondering how a person could predict something in past time. My mind is having a tough time with that one. Did you mean to suggest that he was predicting a past event from the point of view of an earlier past time? If so, which earlier time is it?

My first reaction to your suggestion of using would instead of will was that "so would I." That's what made this sentence so interesting. And then I guessed that you and I have (perhaps unconsciously) connected the fundamental meaning of will (and therefore also would) to time. Is that the case with you? I have since thought better of that. Lolwhites knows what I'm talking about here, no doubt.

I am sincerely interested in your thoughts here, Andy, because I genuinely respect your ideas. You've already proven yourself as a thoughtful and knowledgeable resource on this forum. So please don't be shy in this case.

Larry Latham

[Andrew Patterson]

Thanks for prompting me, I wasn't being shy, I genuinely thought that the others had covered everything I had to say.

Well, it looks like it's back to those tricky modal verbs again.

An important fact to bear in mind is that we are using the perfect tense.

In the perfect tense "must" is usually used for deductions,

"It must have been cold,"

and "will" for expectations,

They must have arrived by now.

Note that we can use the future simple to refer to the present,

Ding dong! "That'll be the milkman." (He always comes at this time.)

Well, I'm not sure where this is leading, and it's getting late where I am, but, (long-windedness aside), there is only a very subtle difference between,

"I would predict that they will have been very cold," and
"I expect that they will have been very cold;" and
the same expressions using "must".

He's clearly using "will" to create a sense of immediacy, I'm not sure how legitamate that is, but I wouldn't censure him for it, any way you look at it, it was *@%&#!!! cold in those days in that place, whether you deduce it, predict it, or expect it.

[LarryLatham]

Note that we can use the future simple to refer to the present

Maybe it's just me, but don't you find this terribly confusing? We can use future tenses to refer to the present. We can use past tenses to refer to the present. We can use present tenses to refer to the future. We can use present tenses to refer to the present

Whew! No wonder our students don't get it. Neither do we!!!

Larry Latham

[Duncan Powrie]

Calm down Larry, calm down! I think you need to have a sitsy for a minute or two and read a book or something (just make sure it isn't The English Verb, though! ).

I suppose the amount of interest we can summon in considering these kind of examples ultimately depends on whether we think our students more need the sytematicity of selected facts, or the bubbling but beautiful chaos of Bill Bryson's "best".

That is, your "No wonder our students don't get it" is ambiguous regarding context - do you mean "in the classroom, tackling this fiendish input", or "out on the streets, where writers pull no punches, let alone drafts from the galleys"?!

I'll credit you with a sense of responsibilty to the mental health of our planet and assume that the example will remain confined to Dave's ESL Cafe's Biohazard Level 4: Brain-eating linguistic life-for(u)m.

[Al]

HI folks

Actually - and pace Stephen above - Bryson's not being that chaotic (deliberately or otherwise). It boils down to the distinction between tense and time reference.

The 'will have' followed by 'was' may jar a bit, but that's exclusively in the ear of the beholder. Because 'will have' is what I've tentatively called 'logical will' it has no time reference and so need not observe the sequence of narrative tenses in the rest of the paragraph.

Had he been writing in the 19th century, though, the services of that proofreader would almost certainly have been pressed upon him

Al

[Andrew Patterson]

Because 'will have' is what I've tentatively called 'logical will' it has no time reference and so need not observe the sequence of narrative tenses in the rest of the paragraph.

Do you mean that English has developed an aorist tense, Al.