Future tenses
Uriel wrote:
<<Got me, what? Present time is now. THIS millisecond, not the next one. It's like a mathematical point; one dimensional, with a location but no size.>>
On phone, A talks to B next room.
A: "Come to my room now. You have to see this letter."
B: "How can I come to your room in this millisecond?"
A: "What are you talking about? I ask you to come to my room Now, of course not in a millisecond! How can you do anything in a millisecond?"
B: "Now is THIS millisecond, not even the next one. I come to your room in the future. Wait for me in the future, five seconds."
A: "Where on earth have you learned that? Are you joking or what?"
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If the present time is only this millisecond, does anyone experience it at all? Does it exist at all? If you are sure the present time is that short, I am sure people will only mention the past and the future, never the present time.
Or you may claim we human being can experience a few milliseconds, the first one is for Simple Present, the second one for Simple Progressive, the third one for Present Perfect... Each tense may have its own millisecond. The theory sounds promising, isn't it?
Not really. "Now" is an indeterminate period of time. But once you specify "next" -- next second, next hour, next day -- you are semantically talking about the future because you used the word "next".
<<"Now" is an indeterminate period of time.>>
I am impressed. Do you know how short a second is? Do you really know how short a millisecond is? And you call it "period of time"! No, it is an infinitesimally instantaneous point of time, which no one can ever experience, worst if it is indeterminate.
Indeterminate means that it is unspecified as to length. What you are referring to as "now" depends on context.
This really isn't rocket science, nor is the concept different in other languages.
Uriel wrote:
<< Indeterminate means that it is unspecified as to length.>>
Why? Is the present time not "this millisecond" anymore? But if present time is an unspecified length, will the future specified? The future time is only NEXT unspecified length, isn't it? In this case, are the two tenses defined or not? Yes, indeterminate and unspecified.
You have at first defined wrongly the future, and therefore accidentally buried the present. Even you are allowed to define it again, you still don't know how to define the future time. That is why people wrongly think there is no Future Tense. How convenient!
However, as human beings have the general concepts of past, present, and future. English grammars for young students have to say there is the Future Tense, using Will, etc. Do you need me to prove there are web pages teaching the Future Tense? I bet you don't.
Unfortunately, deep learners cannot define the future, so they wrongly conclude there is no Future Tense. This is the present-day situation.
The present millisecond is now, if that is the time interval you are specifying. As opposed to the next millisecond, which, given that we are speaking of milliseconds, in this context would be in the future. But if you specified a different period of time as now, such as this minute versus the next minute, your parameters would change.
It's a pretty simple concept, really.
<<The present millisecond is now.....>>
By the time you use 'present' as an adjective, you have presupposed we know the definition of 'present'. But we don't. What do you mean by 'present' here?
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<<.....in this context would be in the future.>>
As every child's book depends on an angel appearing and solving every problem, people will use "depending on the context" as the last resort to discuss tense. But I have never seen any person really quote a context to explain a tense. Where on earth is the context, if it is so useful and important? Really, I would like to know how to use a context to explain the future time? May you give an example of context?
<<It's a pretty simple concept, really.>>
We don't even know whether there is Future Tense or not. Does it indicate a pretty simple concept? While you claim there is no Future Tense, there are many web pages teaching the Future Tense. What you have created is confusion in English tense. Where is the simplicity?
To those deep learners who claim there is no Future Tense:
The reason why you claim this way is you don't know how to define the future time. You don't have to shift your confusion to students who are learning the future tense. After you have known how to define the future time, you have to use present tense like "Be Going To" to throw a contrast with the future tense. As for the time being, you confuse the two tenses, confuse the students, and confuse yourself.
www.englishense.com
Tense is used to express time. Future Tense is of course to express future time. If you cannot see the characteristic of the future time, you don't see the characteristic of the Future Tense, of course. If there is no future time, there is no Future Tense, of course. But ask yourself, is there really no future time? Of course not. The point is how to define it. After you have defined the future time and you tell me there is no Future Tense, I will then believe you.
You're that one that was arguing for pages and pages with Geoff about this, weren't you? Ridiculous.
Acctualy... I think all of tenses are just made up. We cannot catch NOW. It's nondefining I guess. Some time ago somebody created the concept of time and we just can't think in another way.
What's more, some languages has different concept of time. All of them are base on the past, the present and the future. But English has e.g. the tense Present Perfect, which doesn't exist e.g. in Polish.
We won't say:
I have never been to Englang
We'd say:
I was never to England.
It shows that English people put that situation in the present tense (Present Perfect) - there is a big difference.
Some people have to learn to change their concept of time when they use English.
It's similar with the tense Past Perfect. That one used to exist e.g. in Polish but it was replaced by Simple Past. Acctualy that tense is simplier for me to "feel" it. For me it's more natural compering it to Present Perfect
These are important differences between feeling the time.
Count if there were only Geoff.
What about here? Is the discussion ridiculous too?
<<We cannot catch NOW. It's nondefining I guess.>>
Not really. "Present time is now. THIS millisecond, not the next one."