Teacher Discussion Forums

Hi

I have to teach a 5 mins grammar presentation about
"is could the past tense of can?"
Do you have any suggestion?

Thanks a lot!

You aren't the first one to ask the exact same question. Here are the replies for that post:

http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/teacher/v ... past+tense

(The other person was from Buffalo too. Must be the same teacher . )

There's been a lot of discussion about "could" being the "remote form of "can", and "would" being the remote form of "will", etc, but I've suddenly realised that I don't know the accepted term for the "non-remote" form of the modal verb. "Non remote" sounds a little awkward, I'm not sure that "present" is correct either. "Near" just sounds wrong.

Can anyone enlighten me?

Andrew Patterson wrote:There's been a lot of discussion about "could" being the "remote form of "can", and "would" being the remote form of "will", etc, but I've suddenly realised that I don't know the accepted term for the "non-remote" form of the modal verb. "Non remote" sounds a little awkward, I'm not sure that "present" is correct either. "Near" just sounds wrong.

Can anyone enlighten me?

The proximal.

Proximal might be a good term for it. I'll have to think about it some more, but it has promise. Michael Lewis uses the term immediate as opposed to remote.

Yes, I believe it is misleading to say that could is the past tense of can, etc. for a variety of reasons.

To suggest that can can acquire a tense is to suggest that can is a verb. If it has a past tense, then it must also have a present tense. But present tense verbs behave in ways not like can (and all the other modal auxiliaries). They do not take the 3sg -s, as in She lives here. One cannot say *Sally cans later. Moreover, they do not take aspects such that one cannot say *I have caned (or canned). They cannot accept modal modification, so that one cannot say, *She will can eat that. Only one modal auxiliary may appear in any given verb phrase...it is one of the defining characteristics of modal auxiliaries. I believe it will very difficult indeed to successfully establish that modal auxiliaries are verbs, despite what many textbooks may imply by suggesting that *might is the past tense of may.

Moreover, if could is the past tense of can, in the sense that it means can...in the past, then how can you account for a sentence like:

I can't come today, but I could tomorrow.

Sarara, I don't have a good feeling for your predicament because five minutes would not possibly allow for any meaningfully full discussion of the issue. I believe you can make an excellent case for could being the remote form of can, but not in five minutes. Not without first establishing what you mean by remote. That in itself will take an hour.

Larry Latham

I've been using the term "direct" for the opposite of remote. I think is's clear that there is no accepted term,though.

I think 5 mins should be enough to get across the most important ideas.

Lately, I've become aware of modals followed by "well":

Could well, May well and Might well. They appear to indicate probability midway between the form without "well", and "will". Do you agree?

As far as I know, CAN encloses two functions, denoting ability or possibility. I want to give a few notes to the auxiliary.

1. If today is Tuesday and Tom CAN drink two bottles of wine, it denotes ability. Next week as we refer to this past case, we may say: “Last Tuesday Tom COULD drink two bottles of wine.” Here COULD is past tense of CAN expressing ability.

2. If today is Tuesday and the sky is now so cloudy that Tom predicts it CAN rain tonight, it is a possibility. Now even its past form COULD also denotes possibility, but at a weaker certainty than CAN. Next week, however, when we refer to this past case, we no longer use the modal verb anymore: “Last Tuesday it rained at night.” Why? The possibility is gone. That is to say, in this case CAN doesn’t have a past tense.

3. If we still want to refer to the past possibility, we may have to use the perfective: “Last Tuesday it could have rained at night.” In this case, we still refer to a possibility, a past one, claiming that we don’t know if it was raining that night. In other words, COULD HAVE RAINED is the past tense of CAN, relating possibility.

4. But in indirect speech, the possibility can still be expressed not in the perfective: “Last Saturday Tom said that the sky COULD rain at night.” In this case, COULD is still the past tense of CAN. However, in a story where every thing is regarded as past, as a writer describes the actor's meditation, the paragraph may be long and there is no marks of indirect speech and no quotation marks given to the meditation. In this case, we may see an isolated sentence like "The sky COULD rain soon", giving us an impression that COULD can express past possibility. (Actually it can't, as explained in #3.) In this case, the context is important.

These few points happen also to other modal auxiliaries.

"Could" can be used as a past of can to denote abliity. The stock example is
I could play the piano when I was five years old.

However that is anyting but the most common use of 'could'. To make things more complicated it is hard to say where 'could' is being used as a past tense and when it is being used to indicate remoteness. Take a look at reported speech.
"I can do it," he said.
becomes in reported speech either
He said he could do it.[i/]
or
He said he can do it.
The latter implies that the thing has not yet been done, and is of some interest to both speakers at the present moment in time, but the former does not necessarily imply it has been done.

Precisely, Stephen.

And my question is why not let's make things less complicated. One can also see the could in,

"I could play the piano when I was five years old."

as remote. There is no particular need to insist that it is a past of can, for we can simply say that it is remote in time. Remoteness is a flexible concept. The advantage to this is that we are then left with only one single explanation for could/might/would/should.

Where's the disadvantage?

Larry Latham

Stephen Jones wrote:Take a look at reported speech.
"I can do it," he said.
becomes in reported speech either
He said he could do it.
or
He said he can do it.
The latter implies that the thing has not yet been done, and is of some interest to both speakers at the present moment in time, but the former does not necessarily imply it has been done.

I agree it is a very good one!

I have often asked Asian people what is the difference between the two:
ExA: They said they had seen her.
ExB: They said they have seen her.

Stephen your pair of comparison is even better, more puzzling to people.

Since most grammars only teach students, in report speech, because of "They said", how to change have seen to had seen. Many Asians believe that ExB doesn't exist. It does exist, actually. The answer is not difficult, but it is time-consuming, as you know.

Somehow, I don't think people can easily enter your even-better comparison without first solving mine. Thought they are of the same reason, CAN/COULD itself is another problem, and therefore your comparison is putting a problem in another problem.

Shun

Remoteness is a flexible concept

You're a linguistic Platonist, Larry. You actually believe that concepts such as remoteness, or modality have some real existence. I don't.

for non-modal the Past Simple refers to the past in more than 95% of cases. So I prefer to consider using the tense to refer to things remote in other senses than time to be an extension of the more common use than vice-versa. Particularly as often the Past Indicative is replaced by the Past Subjunctive in those cases in other languages.

In linguists using Occam's razor results in a lot of amputees.

Diversity, as I'm sure you know, is what makes life interesting, Stephen.

It often is the unusual uses of language that give us the most illuminating clues as to underpinning concepts at play.

Larry Latham

emil32 wrote:

shuntang wrote:As far as I know, CAN encloses two functions, denoting ability or possibility. I want to give a few notes to the auxiliary.



2. If today is Tuesday and the sky is now so cloudy that Tom predicts it CAN rain tonight, it is a possibility.
**************
This sounds awkard. What do you think of this example for "can" indicating possibility:
"Driving drunk can be dangerous."

You failed to say why it is awkard.

for non-modal the Past Simple refers to the past in more than 95% of cases.

Do you have source for that information, please?

So I prefer to consider using the tense to refer to things remote in other senses than time to be an extension of the more common use than vice-versa.

And why did that "extension" happen?