will have finished + yesterday

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Mon Jul 12, 2004 10:22 pm

Do you like the use here:

A: I'm gonna phone Malcolm and make sure he finishes that report.

B: I'm sure he will have finished it yesterday, he was really determined to do so.

LarryLatham · Post by **LarryLatham** » Tue Jul 13, 2004 12:19 am

I like it fine. There's no problem there for me.

If students find it puzzling, there's an easy explanation. They just have to learn what the use of will means (from a structural point-of-view). (And I know you already know, Metal56, else you wouldn't be asking such questions with that grin on your face!)

Larry Latham

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Tue Jul 13, 2004 10:35 am

LarryLatham wrote:I like it fine. There's no problem there for me. If students find it puzzling, there's an easy explanation. They just have to learn what the use of will means (from a structural point-of-view). (And I know you already know, Metal56, else you wouldn't be asking such questions with that grin on your face!)

Larry Latham

Maybe so, but I've being panned like crazy on another forum for using that structure. If you have any supportive links...

For me, the status of the action described is expressed by:

has finished
have finished

Add to this an adverbial like, "by tomorrow" or "by <the end of> and you have a neat structure. The "will" gives the speaker's stance on the truth of the state of things, that's all.

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Tue Jul 13, 2004 11:25 am

Nothing wrong with it at all. However, I feel trouble brewing as every time this structure comes up all hell gets let loose, as I'm sure some of you will remember

LarryLatham · Post by **LarryLatham** » Tue Jul 13, 2004 4:56 pm

metal56 wrote: Maybe so, but I've being panned like crazy on another forum for using that structure. If you have any supportive links...

I'm not surprised, but if you have, it is from the misinformed.

Supportive links? Sure. Buckmaster, p. 61. Note also, lolwhites, just above.

Larry Latham

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Wed Jul 14, 2004 10:20 pm

Supportive links? Sure. Buckmaster, p. 61. Note also, lolwhites, just above.

Larry Latham

[/quote]

The problem on p. 61 is that he doesn't use a verb of completion.

LarryLatham · Post by **LarryLatham** » Wed Jul 14, 2004 10:45 pm

Pardon me? A verb of what? I thought a verb was a verb. Didn't realize there were subsets. Are there subsets of subsets too? Do we really have to get that complicated? Isn't grammar supposed to simplify things?

Larry Latham

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Thu Jul 15, 2004 12:04 am

LarryLatham wrote:Pardon me? A verb of what? I thought a verb was a verb. Didn't realize there were subsets. Are there subsets of subsets too? Do we really have to get that complicated? Isn't grammar supposed to simplify things?

Larry Latham

Don't panic, mate. There are verbs of direction too.

I meant that my example use the verb "finish" which normally refers to the completion or end of something. Bucky used "called" which doesn't imply completion. My choice seems to allow the detractors to state that if there is completion expressed though the verb, then somewhere "by" (a certain point) should be included in the sentence. Therefore, my sentence refers backwards in time from the moment of speaking and present perfect (will have completed) cannot go together with "yesterday"
because the pres. perf. look forward .. and so on blah. blah! as they do often.

LarryLatham · Post by **LarryLatham** » Thu Jul 15, 2004 12:10 am

Yeah, I get the point (I guess). Apparently it's so much easier to imagine all sorts of tricky complications to a new proposal than it is to just accept that it really works much better than the old way.

"That's the way I learned it as a student, and by golly, that's the way it is."

Larry Latham

(Of course, there is a lot of new stuff coming down the pike that's nothing more than trash, so I can and do sympathize to some extent with the hard sells. But not on this matter.)

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Thu Jul 15, 2004 12:16 am

LarryLatham wrote:Yeah, I get the point (I guess). Apparently it's so much easier to imagine all sorts of tricky complications to a new proposal than it is to just accept that it really works much better than the old way. "That's the way I learned it as a student, and by golly, that's the way it is."

Larry Latham

(Of course, there is a lot of new stuff coming down the pike that's nothing more than trash, so I can and do sympathize to some extent with the hard sells. But not on this matter.)

I agree.

Here ya go:

Actual and Potential Meanings

Although a gerund and an infinitive will often have practically the same meaning ("Running in the park after dark can be dangerous" and "To run in the park after dark can be dangerous"), there can be a difference in meaning. Gerunds are used to describe an "actual, vivid, or fulfilled action" whereas infinitives are better used to describe "potential, hypothetical, or future events" (Frodesen & Eyring 297). This is especially true with three kinds of verbs: verbs of emotion, verbs of completion/incompletion, and verbs of remembering.
http://webster.commnet.edu/grammar/verbs.htm

LarryLatham · Post by **LarryLatham** » Thu Jul 15, 2004 1:02 am

metal56 wrote:Actual and Potential Meanings

Although a gerund and an infinitive will often have practically the same meaning ("Running in the park after dark can be dangerous" and "To run in the park after dark can be dangerous"), there can be a difference in meaning. Gerunds are used to describe an "actual, vivid, or fulfilled action" whereas infinitives are better used to describe "potential, hypothetical, or future events" (Frodesen & Eyring 297). This is especially true with three kinds of verbs: verbs of emotion, verbs of completion/incompletion, and verbs of remembering.

I think I'll elect not to get into this with you, metal56. Your knowledge of the differences in meaning between gerunds and infinitives is more than probably superior to mine, not to mention I am decidedly not comfortable with "verbs of emotion, verbs of completion/incompletion, and verbs of remembering." Sounds like a catalog of verb types to me, and I am mortally opposed to catalogs in grammatical descriptions. Why not, then, verbs of place, verbs of color, verbs of suggestion, verbs of waiting, verbs of height, verbs of...well, you get the idea? This is not an issue for me to be involved in.

Larry Latham

Oh! Maybe I misunderstood your post. Are you showing us an example of the trash that lies around the ESL classroom?

MyProfe · Post by **MyProfe** » Thu Jul 15, 2004 9:31 am

Since when does the future perfect refer to the past? It's hard enough to teach students that by the end of the course they will have studied all the lessons in the book. I understand that languages are constantly evolving and that we are being overrun by global English but let's make things as simple and clear as possible for our students.

www.myprofe.com
www.myprofe.com/foro

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Thu Jul 15, 2004 10:58 am

You are treading dangerous ground talking about the future perfect on this forum.

Most people will argue that there is no such thing as a future tense in English. If you're teaching in Madrid you can tell your students that 'will + have -ed' normally works the same as the future perfect in Spanish, but you are making the English verb system too complicated if you pretend that two modals, 'will' and 'would' work entirely differently from all the others.

'Will have' here is being used predictively. As such there is no reason why it could not be used with 'yesterday', though to some it may sound a little odd. The only way of telling if it is grammaticallh correct is to check the corpus.

LarryLatham · Post by **LarryLatham** » Thu Jul 15, 2004 5:11 pm

Precisely!

Larry Latham

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Fri Jul 16, 2004 1:56 am

Why not, then, verbs of place, verbs of color, verbs of suggestion, verbs of waiting, verbs of height, verbs of...well, you get the idea? This is not an issue for me to be involved in.

Larry Latham

Oh! Maybe I misunderstood your post. Are you showing us an example of the trash that lies around the ESL classroom?

LOL! I only see those categorisations being useful to students who may wish to keep vocabulary books.

Teacher Discussion Forums

will have finished + yesterday

will have finished + yesterday

What a waste of time.