How far back does the present go?

[lolwhites]

The following quote is taken from the BBC website, from a story about the discovery of a mammoth skull:

"Mammoths get through six sets of teeth as they get older and these get bigger as they age. "

Hmmm. The last I heard, mammoths had been extinct for about 50,000 years. So, how would you explain the use of the Present Simple to an enquiring student? I guess even the BBC doesn't make a distinction between tense and time.

[revel]

Hey!

This quote reminds me of certain documentaries I have seen recently, I think produced by the BBC. One set explains dinasaur life in the past and the other throws us millions of years into the future. Naturally, it is the computer animation that gets ones attention at first. However, at least in the Spanish version, the narrator speaks in the present tense as well. Within the context of the documentaries, such use of the present tense brings the experience closer to the viewer, it is no longer something that happened millions of years ago, but rather something we can understand now. Perhaps that is what they wanted to express in the article that you mention.

peace,
revel.

[Duncan Powrie]

Lolwhites, maybe you could simply rephrase your question as "How alive can we make the past?"!

[wjserson]

It's pretty darn flexible as far as I know. Duncan, ever here one of these two examples? :

Take sports commentators for example. In hockey, and other sports from N.Am, the commentators use the present even though the actions they refer to have just happened. "OH! He hits him across the boards" "It's a slapshot!...Ooooh, he misses!" (none seem to say "It was a slapshot") There are many exceptions to this ("That was an incredible save!" when critiquing an action in the recetn passed)

The same can be said when people explain the plot of a film or program to a friend (in N.AM) : "So Jet Li lifts his right leg and kicks the guy right in the face. That guy was pissed off before but now he so mad he tries to shoot Jet Li."

[lolwhites]

I was being a bit disingenous when I asked the original question; I just wanted to see what others thought. Personally, I would take my example, and wjserson's, as evidence that if you want to understand how tenses really work, the first thing you have to do is forget about time. After all, a commentator could also say "That's an incredible save!".

[Duncan Powrie]

Hiya W! Yes, I've heard of the "sports commentary" and "relating film plot" uses (R.A Close's discussions of this kind of thing are the ones that spring most readily to mind!). The film use is interesting...I suppose that as long as we have a videotape or DVD of the movie, and a player, TV, power supply etc it can be watched afresh and is never truly "past" (at least, as far as new viewers are concerned)...perhaps a similar explanation of how "memory" works might help students to see that mental "playback" and narration of an event is not the same thing (nor does it necessarily use the same form) as (past) "simple fact".

[LarryLatham]

I suppose that as long as we have a videotape or DVD of the movie, and a player, TV, power supply etc it can be watched afresh and is never truly "past" (at least, as far as new viewers are concerned)...

Without wishing to niggle this to death, Duncan, if I understand him correctly, lolwhites' point is that we must learn to distinguish between tense and time. As Michael Lewis suggests (correctly, I think), tense and time are different subjects. Contrary to so many textbooks and coursebooks (and oooh so many teachers) English speakers do not use verb tense to indicate the time of actions. Aspects are used for that purpose. (I think lolwhites would agree with me that a distinction also needs to be made between tense and aspect.) Simple Present tense, for example, indicates only that the user believes his statement to be factual. Period. And he also intends that no additional interpretation be applied. Hence it is also known as the unmarked tense. I guess the BBC only wanted to assert something factual about mammoths, don't you agree?

Larry Latham

[metal56]

Good to see other "Lewisites" here, Larry. Yes I agree with the tense and time distinction being necessary-and would still fight for the name "past tense" to be changed. Factuality is one reason for the BBC's choice in using the present simple-but factuality is associated with the past simple also. Looking again a Lewis, I would say the choice is more one of "immediacy", using what Lewis has called the proximate form, as opposed to the remote form (distancing effect).

I'm sure you are aware of the terminology, I'll just post it for the benefit of others.

In jokes, anecdotes and film or book summaries

The present simple tense is very often used in jokes and when telling a story to make the joke or story seem more immediate. This use of the present tense is sometimes called the graphic present.

[Duncan Powrie]

Always nice to see a post by you, Larry!

I used all those scare quotey marker thingies to imply that some teachers might wish for there to be more regularity between a form's name and its uses (and such teachers might well ask why mammoths aren't talked about using ONLY "simple past"...not that lolwhites would be among them!).

You are right to hold Michael Lewis in high regard...unfortunately I have not read his The English Verb in a looong time...perhaps because it is not his most accessible book, and also because even though it should be required reading really, it ironically helps perpetuate an obsession with the verb phrase!

[metal56]

<and also because even though it should be required reading really, it ironically helps perpetuate an obsession with the verb phrase! >

That may be true. The solution is to couple the reading with his Lexical Approach books. Well, the second one maybe - it's more readable.

[LarryLatham]

Oddly enough, I found The English Verb and The Lexical Approach to be his most...comfortable books (though I wouldn't say they are easy reads). In fact, I came to English teaching rather late in my working life (after a career in business), and to my great good fortune, I happened to select The English Verb out of a stack of books in the library as my first reading to prepare me as a teacher. By the end of the first page I knew it was different. It was the first book on English grammar of any variety I had ever read that made real sense to me. The Lexical Approach was also a wonderful and original piece of work (but is also not for reading to relax). His third book, Implementing The Lexical Approach was, I thought, kind of choppy. Useful and needed (in his series of works), perhaps, but less satisfying, at least for me. I think Lewis is a better theoritician than practical mentor. Nonetheless, a teacher informed by his theoretical ideas and motivated by a desire to be a better classroom practician can take some of his suggestions for exercises and expand on them to good effect. I don't think a teacher can be truly effective without a solid theoretical basis for his or her classroom practices. (I mean a solid basis in English, not in educational theory). It's a matter of knowing what you're doing and why. I'm pretty sure you'll all agree with me there. So called "practical" books run the risk of just being recipes that so many unprepared (theoretically) teachers may blindly follow as if they were baking a cake (and often wondering why it comes out wrong).

You make a good point, Duncan, to caution teachers against obsession with the verb phrase as if verb phrases were all there is to English grammar. Of course, maybe the problem is that so many English teachers are confused about verb phrases (and therefore produce confused students) that somehow they never get on with anything else. If verbs could be mastered (and readers of Michal Lewis know that verbs are not really all that hard), maybe there'd be time for other issues.

Also, you are quite right, metal56, in pointing out what I left out. Simple Past Tense does indeed also indicate factuality, and marks it for remoteness. BBC could have said: "Mammoths got through six sets of teeth as they got older and these got bigger as they aged. " But, of course, they didn't. And so they probably were interested in the more dramatic "immediacy" of the proximate form, exactly as you suggested.

Larry Latham

[Stephen Jones]

Actually, nobody has considered the possibility that the person who wrote the web page thought mammoths still lived

On another tack why this obsession with the 0.1% of cases where the past or present tense aren't related to time and total silence over the other 99.9% of the cases?

[LarryLatham]

...why this obsession with the 0.1% of cases where the past or present tense aren't related to time and total silence over the other 99.9% of the cases?

First, Stephen, I don't believe we are obsessed. Obsession implies a compulsive concern. I believe our concern is genuine, and powerful perhaps, but not compulsive.

Second, and more important, I cannot agree with you that our concern is over a tiny fraction of the cases of use of Simple Present tense. In 100% of the cases of use of Simple Present tense, the user indicates unmarked factuality. In 100% of the cases, the user is not relating to "present time", though it may often coincidentally appear he is to those unwilling to dig for deeper meaning. That is our point.

Here are a number of sentences representative of common use. In none of them does the sense of "present time" have any plausible meaning:

Babies cry a lot.
Water boils at 100 degrees C.
Birds of a feather flock together.
Grandma sleeps too much.
I love bananas.
He works at a gas station.
Hotels cost too much.

In every case, meaning can be attributed to the assertion of a fact. No other added meaning component is necessary or even useful. Appending a time component to these sentences (or others like them) is absurd. But of course, one could say that the user thinks these facts are true "now". When else? They probably were also true before now, and will be after now too. But all that is useless babblegab.

Third, and perhaps most important in the long run, failure to understand this leads to confusion between tense and time, which in turn leads to nonsensical ideas like "Simple Present used for the future" (preposterous if Simple Present is supposed to be for present time) and similar confusions. Then, as Duncan has pointed out, we spend all our time and energy trying to make sense of verbs at the expense of other elements of grammar.

Larry Latham

[lolwhites]

Exactly, Larry. A cursory examination shows that the "Present Simple" can refer to Past, Present or Future:

Mammoths get through six sets of teeth as they get older - Past
The students are tired today - Present
Manchester United play Arsenal this Saturday - Future
Ice floats - All three; it always has and always will

It's no coincidence that the same verb form is used, and it's not down to "special uses". The examples have one thing in common: simple, unmarked, immediate truth. Time has nothing to do with it. Maybe we should just call it "The Simple".

Am I obsessed? Possibly, but as a linguist I'm interested and as a teacher I want to get the facts right in my own mind, even if I don't necessarily pass it on to my elementary students in these terms. Over the years I've learned to avoid the gross generalizations that characterized my grammar teaching when I started out. I like to think it's made me a better teacher.

[LarryLatham]

I have no doubt that it has.

Larry Latham