choice

Seiichi MYOGA · Post by **Seiichi MYOGA** » Tue Oct 05, 2004 11:27 am

Which do you prefer for the blank of (1), in or for?

(1) This summer is the hottest [ ] the past 10 years.

Thank you for your help

Seiichi MYOGA

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Tue Oct 05, 2004 12:59 pm

No preference. The point to consider is why they are both acceptable, not which one is "better".

Seiichi MYOGA · Post by **Seiichi MYOGA** » Tue Oct 05, 2004 4:08 pm

Thank you, lolwhites for your participation.

Do you think that what the "for" in this case means is "over the course of"?

Seiichi MYOGA

Casiopea · Post by **Casiopea** » Sat Oct 09, 2004 10:52 am

Seiichi MYOGA wrote:Which do you prefer for the blank of (1), in or for?

(1) This summer is the hottest [ ] the past 10 years.

Thank you for your help

Seiichi MYOGA

It strikes me as odd that Present tense "is" and the Past time adverbial "past 10 years" are compatible. Wouldn't a Perfect verb express it better?

(2) In the past 10 years, this summer has been the hottest.
(3) For the past 10 years, this summer has been the hottest.

Sentence (2) means, within/over the past 10 years, whereas (3) means, during the past 10 years/over the course of the past 10 years. I prefer (2) over (3) though because (3) could be interpreted as having a slight durative aspect to it (i.e., ?This summer has lasted for the past 10 years).

Hope that helped.

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Sat Oct 09, 2004 2:49 pm

'is' is correct.
Time does not enter into it.
He's the tallest in the class.
It's the hottest summer in the past ten years.

The present perfect would be incorrect.

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Sat Oct 09, 2004 4:42 pm

Said on the last day of summer?

"This has been the hottest summer in/for the last ten years"

LarryLatham · Post by **LarryLatham** » Sat Oct 09, 2004 5:30 pm

Casiopea wrote:It strikes me as odd that Present tense "is" and the Past time adverbial "past 10 years" are compatible.

Stephen is right about time not being involved in "is". This is only 'odd' if you confuse tense with time. The two are certainly not the same, nor is tense used directly to express time.

However, I can't imagine why Stephen said that the Present Perfect sentences suggested by Casiopea are incorrect. They look OK to me.

Larry Latham

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Sun Oct 10, 2004 12:50 am

Wahey! Off we go again!

Summer is over out here in Korea, though it's still sunny. So I'll sound a bit odd if I'm telling people "This is the hottest summer in the last 10 years".

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Sun Oct 10, 2004 2:42 pm

I posted quickly Larry,. Cassiopea's sentences appear clumsy, but on mature consideration that is more because she has changed the order than because of the the present perfect.

LarryLatham · Post by **LarryLatham** » Sun Oct 10, 2004 8:15 pm

That's what I figured, Stephen. I knew you hadn't given her sentences much thought. Short on grace, perhaps, but incorrect, no. And I knew you knew that as much as I did. Maybe you owe a tip of the hat to Caseopia, though.

Larry Latham

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Mon Oct 11, 2004 5:35 am

I sometimes think that you all get a bit carried away, and forget that every dictionary on the globe says something like-

Tense: An inflection of grammatical form to indicate time.

That's what it means, whether you please or you don't please. I think that the kind of philosophy you support needs to do away with the word "tense".

LarryLatham · Post by **LarryLatham** » Mon Oct 11, 2004 3:13 pm

Tense: An inflection of grammatical form to indicate time.

I absolutely do not agree with this, woodcutter, despite the popular misconception that tense inflection indicates time, a misconception which has been challenged only in recent years, and, in my mind and others, quite successfully challenged. The mere fact that someone talking about events in "present time" often uses present simple tense verb forms does not mean that present simple indicates present time. And the mere fact that a person wishing to talk about an event which occurred in past time often chooses past simple forms does not mean that "past time" is indicated by past simple tense. There are other verb forms that can be used to talk about past time events, and past simple verb forms can be used to talk about present or even future events. In the same way, present simple verb forms can be, and often are, used to talk about events in future time and also events in past time. It simply does not hold water that "tense is an inflection of grammatical form to indicate time". This is an old wives tale, born long ago of flawed observation (observation of too few examples), and should be allowed now to die and be decently buried.

A speaker's choice of verb tense does have meaning, all right, but it is not to indicate time directly. So far, the most defensible explanation I have seen was, I believe, originally advanced by Michael Lewis in his 1993 book, The English Verb. He defines the choice as having to do with "remoteness", but his ideas of remoteness go far beyond merely substituting one name of form for another. Remoteness has many parameters...one of which is time. But there are others, and the tense inflections can be convincingly shown to represent remoteness in all of its several parameters. That is to say, every time a past simple tense form is used, or a present simple tense form is used, the choice can be comfortably explained with remoteness. No one is confused. If you try to explain tense with time, some examples will be nonsensical.

I know this will be controversial, and I'd love to stay and chat, but I'm off to the airport now for a month in China. So you'll have to chat without me.

Love to all...

Larry Latham

Seiichi MYOGA · Post by **Seiichi MYOGA** » Mon Oct 11, 2004 3:48 pm

May I?
Thank you all for your help and comments.

Do you agree that depending on the choice of prepositions, the time span may be different? "For" in (2) and (3) shows that the time span the speaker is considering is just 10 years while "in" in the same two sentences tells us that the time span may be just 10 years, as with "for", or may be 10 years or less, as with "within." Is that it?

(2) This summer is the hottest [for/in] the past 10 years.
(3) It is the hottest summer [for/in] the past 10 years.

Seiichi MYOGA

ENL may accept (4), although not all do.

(4) I've been to London in 1985.
(5) a. *In 1985 I've been to London.
b. In 1985 I went to London.

In the case of (4), "in 1985" may be a VP adverb, so doesn't modify "have." When moved to the sentence-initial position, "in 1985" changed its status to a sentence-adverb and the main verb must have the form that stands for a single event that happened at a point of the past time. Therefore, the verb form is simple past.

As for (2) and (3), "since 1994" is even not a VP adverb but modifies the superlative. That's what interests me.

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Tue Oct 12, 2004 12:37 am

Sorry Seiichi but I'm going to reply to Larry.

It certainly is a wildly popular misconception about tense, lodged in every single dictionary.

The example we are looking is a good example of why tense does represent past time, you just can't say "This summer is" in December. A basic sentence about the past requires a past form. The fact that there are many (marked) complex situations doesn't change that, and even if there are occasions such as "could you open the window?" or "would you rather I walked?" where it is a struggle to find a literal interpretation of the past form doesn't change that. In language, the rule works, except when it doesn't. Is the question "I wonder if you would be able to open the window for me" asking about my ability? If not, is "able" a word which is not connected with ability?

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