Mystery Hits

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Wed Aug 03, 2005 10:57 pm

Since I am now involved in an Online MA, I can guess who some of the mystery viewers are. A whip enforced search for the "founder" of Applied Linguistics led me to the words of the great "Metal56". (Not that he provided the answer).

I dread to think where "communicative language teaching" may lead.....

Andrew Patterson · Post by **Andrew Patterson** » Thu Aug 04, 2005 6:04 am

Really, a search for "past time adverbials" gives this:
The Hidden Evidence: The Past Family

The present-day explanation for English tense depends much on a falsehood, hiding away the 'Past Family' -- past time adverbials such as "in the past, in the past year, within the past two months, during the past three decades, over the past four weeks, for the past few years".

All grammar books hide away these past time adverbials for Present Perfect and then preach that past time adverbials are not compatible with Present Perfect:
Ex: *I have seen him yesterday.

But the fact is, as we all well know, the Past Family are quite compatible with Present Perfect:
Ex: I have seen him in the past few days.
Ex: They have stayed here for the past five years.
== Grammar writers cannot explain this, and therefore they have to hide these time adverbials away from their books.

Any guesses?

A search for "catenatives" returns yours truly.