The Routine On Yesterday

Xui · Post by **Xui** » Mon Nov 08, 2004 7:18 pm

Ah! This may be easier for you: In the same paragraph, actions finished within Last Friday use Simple Past. Those finished without Last Friday use Present Perfect. Those unfinished now use Simple Present. It this better?

Xui · Post by **Xui** » Mon Nov 08, 2004 7:35 pm

fluffyhamster wrote:As I say, the most important thing is "now".
======================

Yes, I agree. Without NOW, we don't even have LAST Friday! Right?
But I am afraid you don't understand what I mean here.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Mon Nov 08, 2004 7:52 pm

I was just trying to say that I don't think your examples or discussion there was saying anything we didn't already know, Xui.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Mon Nov 08, 2004 7:56 pm

Xui wrote:This is an adverb: Lovely. Do you see any time frame here?

Lovely adjective there, Xui!

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Mon Nov 08, 2004 8:07 pm

Xui wrote:Ah! This may be easier for you: In the same paragraph, actions finished within Last Friday use Simple Past. Those finished without Last Friday use Present Perfect. Those unfinished now use Simple Present. It this better?

Nothing you write is easy to understand, often because the thinking that underlies the limited English is itself limited and muddled.

"Paragraph"? "Time frame"?! Meaningless, that is, undefined and probably impossible to apply consistently (for you). They would only assume any meaning, or, rather, import, if we accepted your entire, rigid, mechanistic view of the language and how it works (or should work).

I am suspicious of anything you say that even remotely whiffs of two-sentence "time frames" (re. the "pretentious" episode earlier on this thread), Xui. Your ideas were ridiculously misguided there at least.

About the only thing you point out that we agree with is that Present Perfect is difficult to explain.

Xui · Post by **Xui** » Mon Nov 08, 2004 8:17 pm

fluffyhamster wrote:
Xui wrote:Ah! This may be easier for you: In the same paragraph, actions finished within Last Friday use Simple Past. Those finished without Last Friday use Present Perfect. Those unfinished now use Simple Present. It this better?
Nothing you write is easy to understand, often because the thinking that underlies the limited English is itself limited and muddled.

"Paragraph"? "Time frame"?! Meaningless, that is, undefined and probably impossible to apply consistently (for you). They would only assume any meaning, or, rather, import, if we accepted your entire, rigid, mechanistic view of the language and how it works (or should work).

If you really don't understand what is paragraph or time frame, then what you say is correct.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Mon Nov 08, 2004 8:25 pm

It isn't important if I or anybody else understands what you are on about, Xui; what is important is that you understand what everybody else is saying.

Xui · Post by **Xui** » Mon Nov 08, 2004 8:32 pm

I must say I have expressed my points enough. The thread is closed for me.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Mon Nov 08, 2004 8:38 pm

Yes, you have "expressed" yourself quite enough.

Don't come back.

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Mon Nov 08, 2004 8:55 pm

I guess the explanation of Stephen Jones is plausible: "we use the simple past not because the action is finished but because yesterday is finished". May you share your opinion?

The point I was making is that yesterday is finished - that is to say it is in the past - and thus we use a past tense.

The Present Perfect is a present tense, and thus the time scheme cannot be exclusively in the past.

"Simple" in this use means that the event is viewed as single, simple entities, total, undivided.

Actually I find it more useful to think of the Simple forms negatively - that is to say they are not marked by either the Continous or the Perfect aspect. Means we don't even need to begin to consider all Xui's nonsense about routine.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Mon Nov 08, 2004 9:11 pm

Stephen Jones wrote:The Present Perfect is a present tense, and thus the time scheme cannot be exclusively in the past.

That's how I think of it too. Interesting, then, that it is often bunged into the "past" section of grammar books.

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Mon Nov 08, 2004 9:21 pm

Two reasons - the first one being that it does deal with things that began in the past at the very least.

Secondly it is clearly a past tense in related languages.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Mon Nov 08, 2004 10:02 pm

OK, I have a question: if you were writing a course, where would you deal with Present Perfect? Quite early, soon after Simple Present, or only after having also introduced Simple Past first (i.e. Simple Present > Simple Past > Present Perfect)?

(Richards, in the chapter entitled "Introducing the perfect", in his The Context of Language Teaching, seems to be recommending that Simple Past come first: "Since the simple past is presumably already available for narration and for the reporting of past events - it is, in fact, one of the most statistically frequent verb forms for this function in discourse (Ota 1963) - the perfect, when it is introduced, should be linked with a function that is new to the students." Although his chapter is generally a useful one, I don't think presenting the "tenses" in this order will avoid the potential for confusion in the student's mind or downplay the "importance" of Present Perfect enough, especially when you consider that one of its clearest functions is to establish the need for more specific (past) "expansion" regarding bald "experiential facts").

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Mon Nov 08, 2004 10:14 pm

I go by the order in the book

Which is nearly always having Sinple Past first.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Mon Nov 08, 2004 11:09 pm

It would just seem logical, and also satisfying to me from a design point of view, to sandwich Present Perfect discretely between two substantially larger "Simple" (Present, then Past) sections in a textbook (I'm not sure where all the other "tenses", ways of expressing the future, or modals, etc etc, would go exactly, but I'd probably deal with them "functionally" rather than strictly formally, again, somewhere "in the middle"). But the traditional ordering must have some merit to it, I guess.