It's "true/false" or "depends" time agai

Andrew Patterson · Post by **Andrew Patterson** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 11:10 am

Perhaps I could point out that remote modals can be used where the future is involved, although I wouldn't go as far as to say that they refer to the future per se, they mearly function to make something more tentative. Rather as Metal just indicated, it is the time adverbial that actually refers to the future.

eg Head office might visit us next week.

LarryLatham · Post by **LarryLatham** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 7:18 pm

Stephen wrote:The truth is much simpler. There are as far as English is concerned two time frames. One is the past time frame and the other is the present time frame, which by default includes the future.

I guess I'm just too dumb to get it (but maybe I'm representative of a large portion of students in this respect). This may seem simple to you, but it is quite opaque to me. Why does "the present time frame...by default [include] the future"? That is a genuine wonderment.

Larry Latham

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 8:21 pm

Stephen Jones wrote:The answer is quite simple. The tense is called the past simple because one, indeed its most common, use is to describe events that happened in a time frame in the past. Saves a lot of dubious philosophical waffle about things in the past being factual but things in the future not being so.

Actually there's past time and non-past time. That's all.

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 8:33 pm

Where else are you going to put it? You only have two tenses in English, and thus only two time frames. It's not going to go into the past time frame so what is left?

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 11:04 pm

Stephen Jones wrote: You only have two tenses in English, and thus only two time frames.quote]

Are Tense and Time the same in English?

LarryLatham · Post by **LarryLatham** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 11:21 pm

metal56 wrote:Are Tense and Time the same in English?

Exactly my question! Stephen, your ideas are based, indeed depend, on the assumption that tense essentially marks temporal distinctions. I, and apparently M56 too, among others perhaps, challenge that assumption.

My challenge is based on the existence of utterances making use of past simple verb forms (a distinct tense) to mean clearly something other than a distinction in time. You have admitted these utterances and their viability and appropriateness. Whether they are correct is not in contention. Use of tense to denote time is.

Are you saying that tense is used to mark time, and also non-time?

Larry Latham

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 12:37 am

LarryLatham wrote:
metal56 wrote:Are Tense and Time the same in English?
Exactly my question! Stephen, your ideas are based, indeed depend, on the assumption that tense essentially marks temporal distinctions. I, and apparently M56 too, among others perhaps, challenge that assumption.

My challenge is based on the existence of utterances making use of past simple verb forms (a distinct tense) to mean clearly something other than a distinction in time. You have admitted these utterances and their viability and appropriateness. Whether they are correct is not in contention. Use of tense to denote time is.

Are you saying that tense is used to mark time, and also non-time?

Larry Latham

Not apparently, Larry, I do also challenge that assumption.

What a beauty this one is:

By their present schedule they ARRIVE in Paris next Monday, though according to their original plan they ARRIVED there next Wednesday.

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LarryLatham · Post by **LarryLatham** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 12:45 am

Metal56 wrote:What a beauty this one is:

By their present schedule they ARRIVE in Paris next Monday, though according to their original plan they ARRIVED there next Wednesday.

Quite! (Let's see if anybody challenges the correctness of this one).

It is sentences like this, which you find with surprising frequency when you're looking for them, that repeatedly confirm, for me, Lewis's contention that tense marks remoteness. Remote time is a factor very often, as Stephen points out, but only events in remote time which can be seen as factual, as Stephen seems to be doing his best to demean. Here, the event is scheduled, which we can see as having a basis in fact, which has already been mentioned in this thread.

Larry Latham

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 2:50 am

LarryLatham wrote:
Metal56 wrote:What a beauty this one is:

By their present schedule they ARRIVE in Paris next Monday, though according to their original plan they ARRIVED there next Wednesday.
Quite! (Let's see if anybody challenges the correctness of this one).

I'm not challenging its correctness, but the 'd' could be knocked off the second ARRIVE(D) there; and if it's variety you crave, there are more "complex" verb phrases that could substitute: will arrive/should arrive, will/should be arriving (will've/should've arrived there by), with the effect that both dates (Monday and Wednesday) are seen as equally possible, both with bases in "fact" (there seem to be two schedules). We'll only know for sure once they land and the "fact" becomes an undeniable, past one.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 2:54 am

I must admit to not always following (wanting, or being fully able, to follow) these kind of threads, hope I haven't appeared to not know my ass from my elbow by butting in like that.

LarryLatham · Post by **LarryLatham** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 4:59 am

Fluffy wrote:I'm not challenging its correctness, but the 'd' could be knocked off the second ARRIVE(D) there

...but it wasn't.

It could have been "would have arrived"; it could have been "were arriving", or any of a half-dozen other forms. But it wasn't. And it's still correct.

Larry Latham

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 5:36 am

LarryLatham wrote:...but it wasn't.

I knew you'd say that, and I kind of deserve(d) it...

Conversations, even those that follow the same repeated pattern, are still fun though, aren't they.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 5:56 am

LarryLatham wrote:It could have been "would have arrived"; it could have been "were arriving", or any of a half-dozen other forms. But it wasn't. And it's still correct.

Hmm, correct, but it doesn't sound just a bit odd to you? It seems too marked to me, creates a clash (as does any VP beginning with a "past" element) in this context (in which future events are being discussed). If we somehow had a means of identifying ("enough") exact meanings-in-contexts (form may not match assumed meaning), I wonder if this kind of "beauty" would be frequent enough to be taken as actually reflecting a consistent and psychologically plausible grammar.

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 7:03 am

fluffyhamster wrote:
LarryLatham wrote:
Metal56 wrote:What a beauty this one is:

By their present schedule they ARRIVE in Paris next Monday, though according to their original plan they ARRIVED there next Wednesday.
Quite! (Let's see if anybody challenges the correctness of this one).
I'm not challenging its correctness, but the 'd' could be knocked off the second ARRIVE(D) there; and if it's variety you crave, there are more "complex" verb phrases that could substitute: will arrive/should arrive, will/should be arriving (will've/should've arrived there by), with the effect that both dates (Monday and Wednesday) are seen as equally possible, both with bases in "fact" (there seem to be two schedules). We'll only know for sure once they land and the "fact" becomes an undeniable, past one.

I'm not challenging its correctness, but the 'd' could be knocked off the second ARRIVE(D)

I disagree.

both with bases in "fact" (there seem to be two schedules). We'll only know for sure once they land and the "fact" becomes an undeniable, past one.

It is obvious that there are two schedules.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 7:18 am

I just mean to say, sure, it is possible (I'm certainly not proscribing it's use), but that I'm not sure if I'd want to "positively" prescribe it (first sense of the two given in the CALD at link below):
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/results ... =prescribe

But of course, I'm being silly, you're just mentioning it as the exception that proves/breaks the rule/interpretation (depending on your viewpoint in all this). I'd still be wary, though, of dumping too many exceptions upon learners' heads/desks/feet etc if they were the types who preferred white lies (as woodcutter I think mumbled some time ago about something, and has been repeating ever since not just in relation to the complexities of the verb phrase, but also regarding what are far simpler matters).

Yes, that's me, any white lie to pacify rather than "clarify", a nice big pacifier for babies and their dummy teachers.