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A concept of time
There are two readers, maybe many more, supporting the theory of emphasis. The bad thing is, they are reluctant to give further examples. They keep arguing the examples have been given and they are enough. They will not repeat these examples or talk further about them. The reason? They are tired.
Those who maintain the theory of emphasis have a difficulty in seeing clear the evident sequence, even with after-clause expressed:
Ex: After Tim left, I found the lost key.
Ex: After he signed the letter, he asked the secretary to send it.
== They claim, these sequences are not evident. Therefore, they have to use Past Perfect to emphasize the sequence.
Do I express these readers will see between the following two kinds of contexts?
(a) A context in which the author frequently uses Simple Past, Present Perfect, and Simple Present. Here, Past Perfect will be seldom used. This context is for commentaries.
(b) A context in which the author frequently uses Simple Past and Past Perfect. Here, Simple Present and Present Perfect will be seldom used. This context is for story telling.
== An author will usually know whether he is writing a commentary or a story. He knows the context.
Now, these readers pretend they still can't see between the two contexts. They cut up a sentence with an after-clause, and claim they can't see the whole context from it. I find it wasting time to explain further the background theory, which is actually very simple, and yet a little difficult for those who even fail to see the evident sequence in their own examples:
Ex: After Tim left, I found the lost key.
Ex: After he signed the letter, he asked the secretary to send it.
"There are two readers, maybe many more, .... "
Yes, including a professional journalist, for the following is an extract and adapatation from a recent newspaper article:
In the afternoon, the weather bureau had issued a warning predicting heavy rain, very strong winds and golf ball size hail. While the heavy rain eventuated, the hail didn't and the winds were only strong.
Had is often used in the description of a completed action, when its follow up doesn't go as predicted. Also:
He had signed the letter, but new information came to light and it was not sent.
«My reply: It seems to me that I have answered your questions. Please read my previous post entirely.»
But to me it seems that you haven't answered most of my questions neither in the mentioned post nor in one of the following posts... I really do not understand what the matter is and why you take me off.
«You may please choose examples from these pages, so we may have a good reference. If all these pages do not support or contain your question, your question may be rare or not existent. I cannot handle such questions.»
LOL!
Why do you insist we must use examples only from google or another web resource? After all, these examples returned by google have been written by human beings, like you, me, or Geoff_One... They are in no ways more correct than those of Geoff_One. So, why must he copy and paste examples instead of creating his own ones, may be more suitable for the illustration of the given problems? If you doubt in their correctness, then consult native English speakers at this forum. Or do you fear they'll prove the examples are correct, thus arguing againt yourself?
You allege these examples are a good reference... But google doesn't check texts for grammar before displaying search results, neither does it sort the results by grammatical correctness (unfortunately ;)
«...your question may be rare or not existent...»
This your phrase made me laugh. Do you think rare questions do not deserve consideration? As far as I have observed, it is rare questions that are really interesting and good, and you don't want to answer them.
As to declaring Geoff_One's quetions/examples non-exstent, this is even more strange. You see them written on the screen and still do not believe they exist... As soon as Geoff_One (or any other person) asks a question, this question begins to exist. And the fact that you haven't met it before makes the question be one of higher importanse for you. It is illogical to refuse to answer such questions.
«I cannot handle such questions.»
Do you they cause a system crash in your brain, or what? Anyway, so much the worse for you, if you can not handle questions that you couldn't find on the web.
«They keep arguing the examples have been given and they are enough. They will not repeat these examples or talk further about them. The reason? They are tired.»
But you didn't agree with my explanation of the first two examples. I don't see a need for other ones. As to repeating my examples, well, what for? You can go to the appropriate post and read them again. And I didn't refuse to talk further about them.
I am tired of your deliberate wrong interpretation of my words. You cut my sentences out of context and let yourself undestand them not in the way they were originally meant. I have wriiten about what I meant by 'evidence' some posts ago, but you keep holding to a wrong interpretation. And, sarting from this, you arrogate to me foolish mistakes, which I didn't actually make. Either you haven't read my post, or you wittingly do not take it into account. Both the things won't do you any good.
Here I intentially do not repeat my post in order for you to find the original one and read/reread it.
«(a) A context in which the author frequently uses Simple Past, Present Perfect, and Simple Present. Here, Past Perfect will be seldom used. This context is for commentaries.
(b) A context in which the author frequently uses Simple Past and Past Perfect. Here, Simple»
Imaging you are starting a historical novel, and the first sentence you want to write has an after-clause. How would you determine whether to use Past Simple or Past Perfect? Or will you ignore this question as you have done with most of the other questions of mine?
What I mean is that you theory has a loop inside itself. In order to decide which tense to use you refer to the context and derive the background from it. But which tenses are used in the context depends on context of context, e. t. c...
«I find it wasting time to explain further the background theory...»
I think it is me who is wasting time, because I write huge posts only for you and you don't read them. Of course such a senseless work makes the discussion not interesting and makes me tired of it...
What you have written in your latest post is just a lie. You could have done this because you didn't pay enough attention to my posts. It seems that you try hard as you can to misunderstand me instead of acting the other way round.
Sorry for possible misprints (they a really annoying when met in large quantities). I didn't have time to perform a spellcheck, I want to sleep.
<<Yes, including a professional journalist, for the following is an extract and adapatation from a recent newspaper article:
In the afternoon, the weather bureau had issued a warning predicting heavy rain, very strong winds and golf ball size hail. While the heavy rain eventuated, the hail didn't and the winds were only strong. >>
What does it prove?
<<Yes, including a professional journalist, for the following is an extract and adapatation from a recent newspaper article:
In the afternoon, the weather bureau had issued a warning predicting heavy rain, very strong winds and golf ball size hail. While the heavy rain eventuated, the hail didn't and the winds were only strong. >>
Have you taken Afternoon as After? Or what?
As for your <in the afternoon + Past Perfect>, please look into the following examples. Are they or not what you were pointing at? Many readers have found them strange in putting the first sentence of the paragraph in Past Perfect, followed by Simple Past. It is a common phenomenon in past background:
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IN THE AFTERNOON THEY HAD ALL SAT IN THE PARLOR WHILE MOTHER READ TO THEM FROM THE BIBLE. It was nice to rest, but it was hard to sit still all day long -- even though Caroline was nearly twelve years old, and old enough not to wriggle like nine-year-old Eliza and seven-year-old Thomas. Martha hardly ever wriggled anymore. She was fourteen and had begun to wear her skirts longer and her brown hair pinned up. Joseph never wriggled either. He was very nearly a grown man'seventeen years old. Henry was only a year younger than Joseph, but it was clear he would never stop wriggling. Caroline knew it took all his willpower to sit quietly on Sunday afternoons. He was always itching to move.
He was moving now, darting in and out among the trees ahead of Caroline, their dog Wolf at his heels. They were on their way to the river to fetch Baby and Bess, the milk cow and her calf. All day long, even on Sunday, the animals roamed free to graze the land. It was Henry's job to round them up and bring them back to the barn before nightfall. Sometimes, if Caroline finished seeing to the hens and geese in time, she went with Henry to find Baby and Bess at their favorite marshy places along the river's edge.
== http://www.harperchildrens.com/teacher/catalog/excerpt_xml.asp?isbn=0064407349
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IN THE AFTERNOON HE HAD FOUND OUR HOUSEKEEPER, DAVID, LYING ON THE LAUNDRY ROOM FLOOR, his eyes rolled back in his head and groaning in pain. Jim put David in the car, found his relatives, and got him medical attention.
On Saturday, Andrew came to us and said that since David was going to die, we should hire his wife as our housekeeper. Remarkably, our suspicions were not aroused by this announcement. David recovered and was back at work a week later.
== http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/archives_roll/2003_01-03/tablerstone_cook/tablerstone_cook.html
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IN THE AFTERNOON, SHE HAD BEEN ILL WITH SPASMS. The doctor came to see her between five and six, and ordered her to go to bed. Her servants and a relative saw her in bed between six and seven, and again saw her asleep about nine, when she awoke and finished writing a letter to father, telling of her illness.
== http://www.attackingthedevil.co.uk/spiritualism/ghosts.php
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IN THE AFTERNOON SHE HAD HAD TO CONSULT A DOCTOR, and he had strongly advised her to cancel the concert. But she was in no mood to spare herself or to disappoint her public. She overcame the decline of her strength with steely willpower.
The climax of the recital was undisputably the C sharp minor sonata, the "Moonlight", especially the Adagio first movement: the temptation is almost to confine this review to that piece alone. Scarcely troubled by its technical difficulties, Elly Ney here attained the highest imaginable degree of expressive power. Her interpretation of its warm melancholy was refreshingly unsentimental, her playing as clear as a bell, her touch crystalline, and the music's rapt self-absorption was conveyed with unsurpassable immediacy….
All those present -- including even the most discriminating of critics amongst them -- were filled with gratitude and happiness.
== http://www.proclassics.de/EllyNey/elly-ney4e.htm
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IN THE AFTERNOON THEY HAD HEARD SHOOTING. Some of them had cautiously looked through a window. One woman said that she saw the gunman lying in the road. "They kept on shooting into him even after he was dead," she said. "Then they came and pulled off his clothes and dragged his body, naked, to the ambulance and threw him in. The soldiers came and told us all to get out of our houses. The soldiers went into our houses and began shooting everywhere. They made us stay outside all this time, almost six hours. They demolished the kitchen, here with a bulldozer." She pointed to the remains; the rubble had been cleared away and dumped across the road in a hollow.
The young men and the children continued to remove things from the house along the street, carrying them to another home further up the hill. "Why are they emptying the house?" we asked. "The soldiers told them to take everything out," said the woman.
== http://www.cpt.org/archives/2003/oct03/0023.html
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Are they or not what you were pointing at?
I am sorry for the distorbance, but it is not a phenomenon.
«The women crowded around us and began to tell us
what had happened.
[here your quotation begins]
In the afternoon they had heard shooting. Some of them had cautiously looked through a window. One woman said that she saw the gunman lying in the road.»
It all is bvery simple. You missed the previous paragraph in your quotation and this caused problems. Actually the previous paragraph ends by the words that the women began to tell what had happened.
And in the following paragraph Past Perfect is used, because the accident in question preceds the moment they were telling about it.
Ant_222,
You are correct. That is what I want to tell Geoff_One. If <in the afternoon + Past Perfect> is at the start of a paragraph, it means it happens prior to the last action in its precedent paragraph. However, if without its precedent action showing up, we cannot explain just <in the afternoon + Past Perfect>, so I suggested Geoff_One find examples on the web. Internet can help solve the problem.
But we don't know if this is what Geoff_One was pointing at.
By the way, this is also why I cannot discuss your examples on one-sentence basis. I cannot disallow you from cutting out one sentence and discuss about it. But did I say we should discuss tenses by the paragraph? No one will succeed in discussing Past Perfect, without showing its precedent Simple Past action.
In the example from englishpage.com, the reasons why we use Past Perfect don't show up:
Ex: I HAD STUDIED a little English when I came to the U.S.
== HAD STUDIED is used because of it precedent Simple Past, which doesn't show up. It is used not because of the subordinate action (action in when-clause).
However, if we shift WHEN to another place, we can see why we use Past Perfect:
ExA: When I HAD STUDIED a little English, I came to the U.S.
== Main action CAME is the "precedent Simple Past action" of the subordinate action HAD STUDIED, because a subordinate clause can literally be put anywhere:
ExB: I came to the U.S. when I HAD STUDIED a little English.
See more at:
http://www.englishtense.com/newapproach/5_2.htm
A Concept Of Time
Ant_222 wrote:
<<It all is very simple. You missed the previous paragraph in your quotation and this caused problems. Actually the previous paragraph ends by the words that the women began to tell what had happened.
And in the following paragraph Past Perfect is used, because the accident in question precedes the moment they were telling about it.>>
My reply: You have explained the time relations very correctly. Most important, you have dispensed with unnecessary meanings such as Resultant Perfect, Current Relevancy.
As I say in my book, I have seldom seen anyone using Meaning to explain Past Perfect. Time alone is enough. Then I asked myself, could we use the same method to explain the three tenses: Simple Past, Present Perfect, and Simple Present? My book is to answer this question. Yes, we can. The difficulty is, there are three tenses, but we have only two timings: past and present.
However, I further noticed that if in a paragraph of sentences, there are actually three timings! If last week is past and today is present, there is a time span between last week and today. It is neither last week nor today. This timing has no name at all. What tense is for this timing? If we have a tense designed to fill in this gap, it will be perfect.
Now I do believe English has a tense specially designed for indicating this time span (between last week and today). It is not a coincidence we have Present Perfect to express this concept of time.
Unfortunately, grammars are always obsessed by the one-sentence basis. On such basis, we cannot explain where this time concept is. And therefore, even deep learners have to admit they cannot explain Present Perfect.
On one-sentence basis, one simply cannot find a time concept for Present Perfect, and there will always be one tense too many. Students are wailing at the tense. Unnecessary meanings are constantly created to explain a certain, incidental case of Present Perfect. They will never know the final solution may be very simple. The method is to get into reality: we put sentences together, eventually.
Believe it or not: If we put sentences together, all we talk about tenses is Time. Even you must insert Meanings into the explanations, you still have to use Time to connect these Meanings. Then you will understand why we all agree tenses are used to express Time.
You know, if you skip the six thousand pages of rules and just work by giving clear examples, you can get students to learn tenses a lot faster. A few detailed situational examples are worth a hundred pages of rules.
I have a grammar exercise that I give students. It contains just 38 simple sentences with blanks that must be filled in. Each blank must be filled in with an appropriate tense of a verb (supplied). I tell students to fill in the blanks with _every tense that is gramatically correct_, and then tell me the differences in meaning among the tenses. If they don't know the differences, I explain them. It's just 38 sentences, but sometimes it takes six hours to finish. But when they are done, they know tenses a hundred times better than they would know after going through the average coursebook.
Interestingly, the grammar exercise is just one page long. The teacher's instructions fill more than 30 pages.
Mxsmanic,
is it an exercise to learn English designed for nonnatives? Would you like to post it in here?
Thank you,
Achab
Mxsmanic wrote:
<<If they don't know the differences, I explain them.>>
My reply: May you tell me the difference between the following frequently used tenses:
ExA: I lived in Japan.
ExB: I have lived in Japan.
These two tenses are a pair of famous nuisance. Many deep learners have to admit, in publication or on the web, they cannot explain them, so the pair of tenses would not deeply trouble students to the degree they feel frustrated or helpless. Would you now try to explain the difference to us?
<< Mxsmanic - You know, if you skip the six thousand pages of rules and just work by giving clear examples, you can get students to learn tenses a lot faster. >>
This approach seems good.
<< ExA: I lived in Japan.
ExB: I have lived in Japan. >>
One reason:
I would use "A", if I was speaking to a person or group of people,
I believe have the idea that it is plausible that "I lived in Japan".
I would use "B", if I was speaking to a person or group of people,
I believe have the idea that it is not probable that "I have lived in Japan".
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