Highly Selected Examples

[shuntang]

Metal65,

Thank you for your message.

Maybe you want to do it all over again, telling the difference between Simple Past and Present Perfect. Very fine. Please understand that usually students cannot see anything strange here, but not for an average adult. Young students cannot see the falsity in your statement, and yet I can.

You may like to look at the idea of cancellation theory and how "since" not only builds a bridge between the past (starting point of an event or situation) and the present (state of things at the moment of speaking) but cancels certain time expressions:

I ate fish last Friday. (finished time)

I haven't eaten fish (present state) since (bridge to and canceler of) last Friday (completed past negated).

But "finished time" is not the characteristic or rule of using Simple Past, as we may tell of finished time in Present Perfect:
Ex: I have eaten snake before. (finished time)
Ex: I have eaten snake in the past. (finished time)
Ex: I have eaten snake when I have visited Japan. (finished time)

In other words, to disprove that Simple Past is to tell finished time, doesn't need so-called cancellation theory. In other words again, how can I believe that only Simple Past is related to past time?

Any more suppositional rules?

Shun

[Lorikeet]

<snip>
Therefore, I guess that before "had used to", there must be another Simple Past sentence happened later than it, or "had used to" is in the subordinate clause. In the very short, "had used to" is a retrospection.

I searched for "had used to" and there were many such examples at the first resulting page:

Ex: This was an adaptation of a technique that researchers Kong-Peng Lam and Klaus Rajewski had used to study lymphoid cells, but it had not been applied to cancer modeling,” said Orkin.

Ex: In Pittsburgh last month, several visiting St. John's University basketball players were cleared of a rape accusation after one team member gave investigators his cell phone, which he had used to videotape some of the encounter.

Ex: An article by Christensen and Suess published in Byte magazine described CBBS and outlined the technology they had used to develop it, sparking the creation of many tens of thousands of BBSes all over the world.
== All the "had used to" here are in the subordination, happening before its main action.

<snip>
Shun Tang

I hesitate to get into this discussion, but I thought I'd suggest looking at the sentences you found again. I thought you were looking for some sentences that would use "used to" as in "I used to do it but I don't any more," but with the past perfect. However, the three examples you have chosen are all of the type, "The pencil sharpener was used to sharpen the pencil." or "He used his cell phone to call his friend." (This is the cell phone he had used to call his friend.")

Lorikeet

[shuntang]

Lorikeet,

I am sorry but I didn't quite get the point.

You seemed to refer to my examples:
> However, the three examples you have chosen
> are all of the type, "The pencil sharpener was
> used to sharpen the pencil." or "He used his cell
> phone to call his friend." (This is the cell phone
> he had used to call his friend.")
>
My reply: But all my examples are in "had used to", which doesn't appear in your examples. Moreover, you didn't put in a question mark, so I don't know what or where is the problem. Therefore, I couldn't get the idea you are talking about. Would you like to explain a little more and put in a question mark?

Shun

[shuntang]

The ABC Of Using Modal Verbs

There are things we are not certain whether they happen or not. We use modal verbs to express them. Different modal verbs tell different reasons why we say an uncertainty. If a modal verb cannot meet the reasons, then it expresses pure possibility. On the other hand, if we are certain about something, we don't use modal auxiliaries to help express.

Simply put, every modal verb thus has two functions, expressing its lexical meaning and possibility.
CAN expresses ability, and if not, it expresses possibility.
MAY expresses permission, and if not, it expresses possibility.
WILL expresses willingness, and if not, it expresses possibility.
SHALL expresses opinion, and if not, it expresses possibility.
MUST expresses obligation, and if not, it expresses possibility.
OUGHT to expresses duty, and if not, it expresses possibility.
There are some more of them and you may find them in grammar books. It should be noted that their past forms are also express the same thing as their present form, yet at a even weaker degree of uncertainty.

As most future things are uncertain, we frequently use modal verbs to describe them. However, since there are also uncertainties at the present, we actually may use modal verbs at any time we need. Nevertheless, we use Modal Verb + Perfective to tell a past possibility:
Ex: They must/would/should have seen him last night.
== In such cases, we seldom use present form of modal verbs.

As there can be many shades of possibility, different situations/sentences will make the possibility look like prediction, permission, concession, certainty, probability, guess, etc. However, they are only possibility, some kind of uncertainty. Rather than from the modal verbs themselves, many meanings are derived from the sentence:
Ex: "You talk about my wife again and I must kill you."
The modal verb expresses only a possibility, but the sentence itself is a serious threat, the more so if I shout it in front of someone, pointing my finger to him. As some grammar writers will show you their ability in analysis, however, their books will list this example as the use of telling a threat, etc. This only confuses students and misleads them to nowhere.

Onerous usages will worry students, but these usage only show the confusion of the one who explains. EFLs can already speak English fluently as they start to learn grammars in schools. They therefore don't care about rules and some may go so far as to think that grammars are useless. However, ESLs depend mostly on grammars, and complicated usages would be a nightmare to them.

In my humble opinion, modal verbs are so difficult for students that we shall keep a very concise, simple view for them. It is wrong for us to display the almighty power of a sentence, and then confuse the meaning of a sentence with that of the modal verb or the tense, and finally keep quiet the role of the sentence completely. They call them "The English Verb", while the whole thing is about the SENTENCE. (Note: A few grammar writers have called his or her grammar book "The English Verb", to the same name.)

Shun

[metal56]

[

But "finished time" is not the characteristic or rule of using Simple Past, as we may tell of finished time in Present Perfect:
Ex: I have eaten snake before. (finished time)
Ex: I have eaten snake in the past. (finished time)
Ex: I have eaten snake when I have visited Japan. (finished time)

Now I know that you know nothing about the present perfect. Time to move on.

[metal56]

Simply put, every modal verb thus has two functions, expressing its lexical meaning and possibility.
CAN expresses ability, and if not, it expresses possibility.
MAY expresses permission, and if not, it expresses possibility.
WILL expresses willingness, and if not, it expresses possibility.
SHALL expresses opinion, and if not, it expresses possibility.
MUST expresses obligation, and if not, it expresses possibility.
OUGHT to expresses duty, and if not, it expresses possibility.
There are some more of them and you may find them in grammar books. It should be noted that their past forms are also express the same thing as their present form, yet at a even weaker degree of uncertainty.

Lucky that you didn't try to define "should".

[shuntang]

But "finished time" is not the characteristic or rule of using Simple Past, as we may tell of finished time in Present Perfect:
Ex: I have eaten snake before. (finished time)
Ex: I have eaten snake in the past. (finished time)
Ex: I have eaten snake when I have visited Japan. (finished time)

Now I know that you know nothing about the present perfect. Time to move on.

Metal56, you failed to post the reasons to the conclusion.

[shuntang]

Met56,

I nearly forgot this important point of argument.

Permission
(e.g.) I smoke in this room?
(e.g.) You not smoke here, but you smoke in the garden.
(e.g.) You meet her tomorrow, but tonight you have to stay home.

Concession
(e.g.) OK, OK, you win! You go there once you've finished.
(e.g.) I surrender, you do with me what you will. [/color]

From all these examples I have got rid of the modal verb CAN, but from the sentences alone we can still clearly see permission and concession. Of course, you may again argue that after the removal of CAN, you can see nothing here from the unreadable, ungrammatical structures.

I see some extremely grammatical, though somewhat colloquial, structures:

(e.g.) I smoke in this room? (The actor asked the director of the film/The man with senile dementia asked his nurse/The woman who liked to drop her auxilaries uttered)

*(e.g.) You not smoke here, but you smoke in the garden.

As I said, after the removal of CAN, you can claim you see nothing here in these unreadable, ungrammatical sentences. Once again, you can see Time, but you can't see anything from a concrete sentence, just because it doesn't have tense. Don't tell me you can see anything here in:
Ex: *Tommy go to school every day.

The secretary informed the boss about his appointments for the next day but advised his to go home to bed so that his flu would subside:

You meet her tomorrow, but tonight you have to stay home.

The modal is there to prevent ambiguty. If you wish to ellipt it, it should be recoverable to the addressee.

To be fair, as same as above, tell me what the sentence implies as the modal verb is removed, so that I can say the same meaning to the same example that contain the modal verb.

If you claim You meet her tomorrow, but tonight you have to stay home as an advice from the kind secretary to the boss, can't you see it is also an advice if we put back the modal verb? The boomerang will return to you:

The secretary informed the boss about his appointments for the next day but advised him to go home to bed so that his flu would subside:
Ex: You can meet her tomorrow, but tonight you have to stay home.

Now, with the modal verb CAN, must you see a concession here? Not an advice?
Now, is it true that, as you said, the modal is there to prevent ambiguity?
No! The modal verb says what the sentence says. This is our subconscious interpretation. There seems no way we can change it. (My explanations to modal verbs should be seen in messages above.)

Shun Tang

[shuntang]

Simply put, every modal verb thus has two functions, expressing its lexical meaning and possibility.
CAN expresses ability, and if not, it expresses possibility.
MAY expresses permission, and if not, it expresses possibility.
WILL expresses willingness, and if not, it expresses possibility.
SHALL expresses opinion, and if not, it expresses possibility.
MUST expresses obligation, and if not, it expresses possibility.
OUGHT to expresses duty, and if not, it expresses possibility.
There are some more of them and you may find them in grammar books. It should be noted that their past forms are also express the same thing as their present form, yet at a even weaker degree of uncertainty.

Lucky that you didn't try to define "should".

Once again, you can feel and look at the abstract Time, but you can't see the concrete words in front of you.

Shun

[Ed]

Shun,
There are so many posts here, I have a hard time following. Let me just refer to this one that caught my eye:

Lorikeet wrote:

However, the three examples you have chosen are all of the type, "The pencil sharpener was used to sharpen the pencil." or "He used his cell phone to call his friend." (This is the cell phone he had used to call his friend.")

What Lorikeet says is right. These are not examples of the Past Perfect "had used to + V", which we had discussed in another thread. Rather, these are examples of the Past Perfect "had used" (of the verb USE). The "to" that follows indicates purpose as in "He had used his cell phone IN ORDER TO videotape..."

This is the danger of your google hits.

[Ed]

Shun,
Now I'll refer to what you have said to me:

I’m too not so sure what you are pointing at. Do you have a rule for the student to say that "JFK was killed" and not "JFK has been killed"? If you have any rule about any tense, any rule at all, please tell me.

Actually, a past person doesn't necessarily entail Simple Past, and this is why we have many kinds of tenses to express many kinds of time:
Ex: Even today, JFK lives in all our hearts.
Ex: JFK has been my hero since I knew about his story.

Now, it is your turn to teach me why we can only say "JFK was killed".

Leaving metaphors and imaginary contexts aside, if we talk about JFK's assassination, we will say "He was killed" because it's a fact, it happened a long time ago, it's gone and over with.
On the other hand, if you've just witnessed an accident two minutes ago, you can say "Someone has just been killed".
This is pretty much what Metal said before.

Of course we can refer to dead people as if they were still alive (in our hearts, like you say). Your two examples do not contradict what I explained above. If JFK has been your hero, it does not mean he is still around, you are talking about your feelings only.

A better example to make my point: we would not say "JFK has visited my university" but "JFK visited my university". Now you tell me why.

[Ed]

Continued

I promise you the sentence does matter. From the very beginning, teachers were wrongly teaching students through the meaning of the sentence. Today we instinctively and subconsciously regard the tense expresses whatever a sentence expresses, though we don't mention the role of the sentence anymore.

Who said context did not matter? All the elements of a sentence can contribute to its meaning, some being more important than others (remember content words vs. function words?).

You may even deny me and claim that my example in THE EVOLUTION OF A TENSE is not a grammatical or readable structure:
Ex: Tommy (go) to school every day.
So you may see nothing here. Actually, in another forum a person did argue this way, though he was immediately denied by other readers.

Indeed, if a young student habitually forgets to use the tense:
Ex: Tommy go to school every day. (not grammatical)
the dutiful teacher will tell her or him, “Now as you want to describe a habit, you have to use Simple Present, because Simple Present is used to tell habit.” That is how we acquire the instinct of using Simple Present to express habit. But what I want to point out here is that even without the tense, the teacher can still see a habit -- believe it or not.

The words "every day" indicate habit, repetition, routine. Take out the verb altogether and you can still interpret the sentence that way. But that does not mean the tense does not matter. You do not know if Tommy goes to school or used to go to school or what, so it does not follow that you would conclude that the form needed is GOES.
On the other hand, which is the unmarked interpretation of a question such as "What do you do?", of a statement like "I go to school"?
Maybe this is what you are talking about.

Now we may test the examples of Permission or Concession. Please compare the following modified examples with yours in the quotation above.

Permission
(e.g.) I smoke in this room?
(e.g.) You not smoke here, but you smoke in the garden.
(e.g.) You meet her tomorrow, but tonight you have to stay home.

Concession
(e.g.) OK, OK, you win! You go there once you've finished.
(e.g.) I surrender, you do with me what you will.

From all these examples I have got rid of the modal verb CAN, but from the sentences alone we can still clearly see permission and concession. Of course, you may again argue that after the removal of CAN, you can see nothing here from the unreadable, ungrammatical structures.
=================

You denied the sentence reveals a permission and wrote:
(b) Did I smoke in this room? (as if I didn't know!)

Ed, please!! You have already understood it is a permission. As you use DID here, you have to add the brackets to imply "as if you didn't know" whether there was the permission or not. In other words, the brackets have betrayed you.
In other words again, to add difficulty to the example for me, you shouldn't have added the brackets.

I need not repeat what Metal said. He already referred to the first part.
I do not see why "I smoke in this room?" should necessarily be interpreted as "Can I smoke in this room?"
Maybe you misunderstood my joke. "As if I didn't know" means I am asking that question to be funny or ironical, since I would normally remember if I had smoked in that room. I am acting innocent after someone has accused me of smoking. It has nothing to do with permission.

[metal56]

Lorikeet,

I am sorry but I didn't quite get the point.

You seemed to refer to my examples:
> However, the three examples you have chosen
> are all of the type, "The pencil sharpener was
> used to sharpen the pencil." or "He used his cell
> phone to call his friend." (This is the cell phone
> he had used to call his friend.")
>
My reply: But all my examples are in "had used to", which doesn't appear in your examples. Moreover, you didn't put in a question mark, so I don't know what or where is the problem. Therefore, I couldn't get the idea you are talking about. Would you like to explain a little more and put in a question mark?

Shun

Lorikeet was trying to nicely tell you that your sentences were all examples of the full verb "use". That is not the item we were discussing.

[metal56]

Leaving metaphors and imaginary contexts aside, if we talk about JFK's assassination, we will say "He was killed" because it's a fact, it happened a long time ago, it's gone and over with.
On the other hand, if you've just witnessed an accident two minutes ago, you can say "Someone has just been killed".
This is pretty much what Metal said before.

Of course we can refer to dead people as if they were still alive (in our hearts, like you say). Your two examples do not contradict what I explained above. If JFK has been your hero, it does not mean he is still around, you are talking about your feelings only.

Good post.

[metal56]

If you say "I can see her sitting there right now and laughing", you are looking at her, not the time.

Again this shows that you need more practice in non-literal speech.

Let me help:

A: Right there in the middle of the crowded restaurant he tried to propose to her.

*B: I can see her sitting there right now and laughing.

A:I'm sure she did. lol. She often reacts that way.

There speaker B is looking back over time and space to an event that is completed at the time of speaking.

* If you want the written grammar version: I can see her right now, sitting there and laughing.

You can replace "I can see her..." with "I can imagine her..." if you like. You can also replace "see time" with something less figurative if you wish. As long as you only see "see" as literary in use, you will never see what I mean.


Conceptual metaphor (read Lakoff)

Cast your mind back to when we first met. ( Root is activity of Fishing).
Let your thoughts wander through time to what it may be like in 2050.(Root is activity of Walking)
Look how far our relationship has come. (Root is activity of travel and real physical or temporal distance)


Other:

Think back to where it all began.
In a retrospective way.
I'm sitting on a bench in the park. It's 1922 and suzy is by my side.

And are we truly only coldy reporting when we say:

Then she looked at me and I at her and I asked her to marry me.

Or are we getting partly unconscious sensory/motor support in the form of memory to help us retell with feeling or to aid memory. Watch a good storyteller and read about kinaesthetics, then you'll see how time-travel is possible.

As long as you claim Time is visible, our discussion is piece of cake for me.

Subjective Time -- The duration we feel; also called psychological time. A qualitative measure.

Subjective Space -- transformed "place" by the actor/speaker and perceived by the spectator/listener as such.


I claim the right to perceive (see) things with other faculties than just my eyes and I insist on my use of figurative language.