Hello again,
Shun.
A very good question, yours, asking me to define
remote. Without a good idea of what that means, it may be impossible to imagine what I'm talking about. I should have done it originally, I guess. I sometimes take certain things for granted, when I shouldn't.
In fact, it is not easy to define.
Remoteness is the feeling of relative far-ness that you get from certain pairs of English words. There is
spacial remoteness that you get from comparison of the meanings of
here and
there, for example, or
this one and
that one, or
these and
those. One of the pair is farther away than the other. This sort of dichotomy of meanings is an extremely common and important element of English grammar, and cannot be emphasized too much by teachers. In addition to spacial remoteness, there can be several other remotenesses, equally as important in grammar. There is, of course, remoteness of time.
Immediate time, is the time that is at or near the
present moment, whereas
remote time would be relatively far from now. There could be two kinds of remote time, I'm sure you will realize:
time past and
time in the future. Past Simple Tense, on those frequent occasions when it does indeed refer to remotness in time, is used
only for
time past, because Past Simple Tense also is used when the user wants to make
factual statements, and facts which are remote in time can only be in past time. Events in future time could not be factual, since they have not yet occurred.
Tenses (Present Simple and Past Simple) are specifically chosen when the user wishes to state what he believes to be
fact. When other interpretations are desired, he intentionally chooses
aspects to use in verb forms.
But there is more. Some of your friends are close, some others are less so. You know them, maybe even rather well, but you might not share your innermost thoughts with them. Another way to put that is to say that your relationship with some of your friends is more
remote than with a certain special few close friends. So remoteness can refer to relationship as well as space and time. It is important in English grammar when you remember that your teachers told you something about "it is
more polite to say
X than to say
Y". Now I ask, with whom are you polite? Is it with people you feel close to, or people with whom your relationship is more remote? Do you say "please" and "thank you" all the time when you talk to your mom and dad, or your wife, or your children? Or is it most likely to be with your boss, or with some of your colleagues at work (especially those you don't know very well)? Polite language, of any sort, is reserved for people with whom we have remote relationships. "
Excuse me, what was your name?"
There can also be remoteness of possibility. Some events are more possible than others, in our points-of-view. This too, has its impact in English grammar. It allows sentences such as, for example, "I can't come today but I
could tomorrow."
Could, here, is a
remote form.
Now, let's look at some of the example sentences you have offered.
1.
He works in that company.
2.
He worked in that company.
You are correct when you say that sentence 2 implies that he doesn't work there now. But let's carefully consider the process by which we can get to that understanding. Sentence 1 merely states a fact--
with no added interpretation desired. Sentence 2 is still a fact (in the user's eyes), but he wishes to convey that there is something
remote about that fact--in this case, that it is
remote in time. Remember that Past Simple verb forms are not fundamentally about time, but the remoteness they suggest
can be about time. Where people often get confused is when they leap from the verb form to a meaning about time, without understanding that there is an important intermediate step involved.
By the way, your point about not being able to end, "
I have lived here..."
in any way you want is well-taken. I put that badly. Perhaps I should have said "...
with any context appropriate phrase." Thank you for calling attention to my error.
I hope this helps somewhat,
Shun. You are quite right to be confused over this issue, and you certainly are not the only one. But you are one of the few who have eloquently voiced your confusion and insisted on a straight answer. Even most native speakers will not know exactly how to deal with this, although they are not likely to make mistakes in usage. It is extremely challanging to a non-native speaker, though, and you should be commended for pursuing clarity here. You will have to think carefully about this for some time before it becomes totally unclouded in your mind, working through many examples as you come across them in reports, newspapers, native speech, books and whatever other English you encounter in your daily life. I would guess that you deal with English rather often, perhaps in your work, since you seem to have rather a good command of it.
Larry Latham
...I realize past habits (routines?) can be expressed without using "used to" (i.e. we could simply use Simple Past), I just meant to imply that under "used to" is probably where one would find at least some information about past habits/routines in most grammars.
).