A concept of time

I don't see your point. The fact that you've made the exact same generalization on three different occasions doesn't change its significance. What if one hears, "entense says, birds fly" or "engtense has always said, birds fly" or "entense will always tell you, birds fly"? Why does it matter?

>My reply: If your living in Hong Kong is finished, why don't you use Simple Past? When there is a past time adverbial (ie "in the past three years"), and you don't live there anymore, why do you still use Present Perfect?

As you said, "All you know is that I once RESIDED in HK in the last 3 years." Why can't you also use Simple Past in "I lived in HK *in* the past 3 years", indicating a finished living?<

Using "I have lived", the Present Perfect indicates a time span up to the present. In this example, the past three years. But "I lived" (Simple Past) doesn't meet up with the present, so is mismatched with "the past three years".

Chuck wrote:
<<I don't see your point. The fact that you've made the exact same generalization on three different occasions doesn't change its significance. What if one hears, "entense says, birds fly" or "engtense has always said, birds fly" or "entense will always tell you, birds fly"? Why does it matter?>>

My reply: No wonder you have repeatedly asked me to give example. You were waiting me to say something like yours, so you may say "I don't see your point".

Let's go through the time flow:

At first I explained my point:
Actually, just because there is generalization, we use Time to specify a case of it, so every case can be specific. Therefore, yesterday's "Birds fly" will be not mixed up with today's "Birds fly", even their content and meaning are the same.

And my examples are:
Yesterday you said "Birds fly"; today you have said "Birds fly". They are of different time spans. In our present discussion we say "Birds fly", so it is a present use.

You didn't comment on my examples. Instead, you have produced your own example:
<<What if one hears, "entense says, birds fly" or "engtense has always said, birds fly" or "entense will always tell you, birds fly"? Why does it matter?>>
== Believe it or not, you commented on your own examples, and concluded you don't see MY point.

OK, you are correct, because you didn't see my examples.

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You wrote:
<<Using "I have lived", the Present Perfect indicates a time span up to the present. In this example, the past three years. But "I lived" (Simple Past) doesn't meet up with the present, so is mismatched with "the past three years".>>

My reply: If you understand that, why have you given me information in Simple Past?
<<All you know is that I once RESIDED in HK in the last 3 years.>>

Actually I have already explained my point that is similar to your reasoning above to use Present Perfect:
///////////////
I doubt that by using "in the past three years", you mean you don't live there ANYMORE.
"In the past three years, etc." is another way to say Since. With Since, even you have finished a job, the whole action is not regarded as a completion, because Since is a part of the action and not yet completed. Because part of action (ie Since) is not finished, the whole action is not recognized as finished. Details are in the following page:
== http://www.englishtense.com/newapproach/6_3.htm
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
In the web page I explain: with Since (or "in the past three years"), even if the main action is finished, the whole action is called intermission, not a finished action. And therefore Present Perfect is used.

You seemed not to understand what I have explained and said:
<<To reiterate: if I have lived in HK *for* the past 3 years and in that time worked in other countries, then my current status is "I live in HK". However, if I have lived in HK *in* the past 3 years, then you don't that "I live in HK"; you don't know what my current residency status is. All you know is that I once resided in HK in the last 3 years.>>

Well, by reiterating "All you know is that I once RESIDED in HK in the last 3 years", you are arguing against yourself in using Present Perfect with "in the past three years". Or would you tell me why you use Simple Past RESIDED with "in the last 3 years"?

-------------------------
You defined Present Perfect:
<<Using "I have lived", the Present Perfect indicates a time span up to the present.>>

My reply: I have explained to you why it is hard to define Present Perfect: "The logic is very simple. There are only two notions of time, past and present, which are occupied by Simple Past and Simple Present respectively. And you cannot define Present Perfect so that it escapes from both the past and the present time. It must fall into either the past or the present."

The time span you said here is already occupied by Simple Present: "I live in HK", because every present action is actually started before now and up to the present. I do not live here just only when I use Simple Present to say it. Using "I live", the simple Present indicates a time span up to the present.

Try to define Present Perfect again? My promise still is: on one sentence basis (one sentence and one tense), whatever you say to Present Perfect will be said word for word again to either Simple Present or Simple Past.

>And my examples are:
Yesterday you said "Birds fly"; today you have said "Birds fly". They are of different time spans. In our present discussion we say "Birds fly", so it is a present use.<

They were said at different instances and different discussions resulted on each of those occasions. So what?

>My reply: If you understand that, why have you given me information in Simple Past?
<<All you know is that I once RESIDED in HK in the last 3 years.>>
<

I don't know why. I think the idiomatic "once" might have something to do with this. So I suppose the Simple Past could be used, as well as in "I (have) lived in HK in the past three years" but the tendency and certainly mine would be to use the Present Perfect with "in the past three years". I doubt using the Simple Past would cause any ambiguity.

>I doubt that by using "in the past three years", you mean you don't live there ANYMORE.
"In the past three years, etc." is another way to say Since. With Since, even you have finished a job, the whole action is not regarded as a completion, because Since is a part of the action and not yet completed. Because part of action (ie Since) is not finished, the whole action is not recognized as finished. Details are in the following page:<

I've posted a diagram to show how "in" differs from "for" and "since".
http://static.uploadhut.com/upload/477949.bmp??

(A), (B), (C) represent the three consecutive horizontal lines.

(A) "I have lived in HK since 2002" / "I have lived in HK for the past three years"
(B) "I have lived in HK in the past three years. I lived there for 6 months" (imagine the line spans 6 months)

(C) "I lived in HK for three years."

>You defined Present Perfect:
<<Using "I have lived", the Present Perfect indicates a time span up to the present.>>

My reply: I have explained to you why it is hard to define Present Perfect: "The logic is very simple. There are only two notions of time, past and present, which are occupied by Simple Past and Simple Present respectively. And you cannot define Present Perfect so that it escapes from both the past and the present time. It must fall into either the past or the present."<

The Present Perfect rule is well defined but should probably be only used as a guideline (but an important one) because sometimes, as you have shown, it's easy to stray from.

Chuck,

<<They were said at different instances and different discussions resulted on each of those occasions. So what? >>

My reply: Then there is no such things as generalization, or timelessness, etc.

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<<I don't know why. I think the idiomatic "once" might have something to do with this. So I suppose the Simple Past could be used, as well as in "I (have) lived in HK in the past three years" but the tendency and certainly mine would be to use the Present Perfect with "in the past three years". I doubt using the Simple Past would cause any ambiguity. >>

My reply: I agree. For a long time I too held the theory that the pattern "in the past few years" is compatible with either Simple Past or Present Perfect, indicating a finished action or unfinished action respectively. My reason is, even nine out of ten examples of the pattern I have found are in Present Perfect, there must be still one out of ten is in Simple Past. However, taking into the consideration that grammars will not teach the pattern to students, and theorizing the pattern is another way to say Since, I have decided to say the pattern is for Present Perfect only.

I check exact match for "once *** in the past", where asterisk stands for any words. I cannot find any example that is similar to your examples. But it doesn't mean your example may exist somewhere.

-----------------
<<(A) "I have lived in HK since 2002" / "I have lived in HK for the past three years"
(B) "I have lived in HK in the past three years. I lived there for 6 months" (imagine the line spans 6 months)
(C) "I lived in HK for three years." >>

My reply: The pattern "in the past three years" is in my book named the Past Family, please see:
== http://www.englishtense.com/newapproach/2_4.htm
I am the person who has studied and discussed the most of the pattern. After a few years of discussion, I suddenly realized its relation with Since. If this year is 2005, "in the past five years" is another way to say "since 2000". It seems no readers questioning this equation. It is same as your (A).

But why grammars would, as explained in my web page above, avoid talking of these time adverbials? It is because they violate the "golden rule" that Simple Past can, and Present Perfect cannot, stay with past time adverbial:
Ex: *They have worked here yesterday.
Therefore, they hide away such examples as this:
Ex: I have lived in HK for the past three years.
How would you then explain the relation between such examples and the "golden rule"?

As for (B), I suggest you may post it as a new thread, and see if people will accept it or not. The two periods of living is incompatible:
Ex: ?"I have lived in HK in the past three years. I lived there for 6 months."

In explaining Present Perfect, grammars will make use of time expressions such as "since 1987, for ten years" for help. With these time frames, Present Perfect is not an unfinished action.
But without these time adverbials, Present Perfect just expresses a finished action: "I have done it."
These two uses are contradictory. However, without knowing the tense-changing process, grammars mostly regard them as compatible. They can use vagueness to combine the two uses.

-----------------------
What about the timeline?

Conventional grammars have taken it for granted that, in each sentence, there is one action. If it is finished, use Present Perfect or Simple Past. But according to my tense-changing process, it indicates there are two important elements in the sentence: time adverbial and the action.
1.<Present> = an unfinish, eg: I live in HK.
2.<Perfect> = a finish, eg, I have lived in Japan.
3.<Perfect +DPTA>= an unfinish, eg: I've lived in HK since 1987.
4.<Past + DPTA> = a finish, eg: I lived in Japan in 1980s.
== DPTA means a Definite Past Time Adverbial.
How can a timeline include this two-elements notion?
How can a timeline include this tense-changing process?

However, if one doesn't agree with the tense-changing process, how can he allocate just two notions of time, past and present, to the four patterns?

Will the conventional vagueness, "a past action that continues, or has an effect to, the present time", explain Present Perfect in both #2 and #3? No, the vagueness successfully explains the four patterns at once!!

-----------------
<<The Present Perfect rule is well defined but should probably be only used as a guideline (but an important one) because sometimes, as you have shown, it's easy to stray from.>>

My reply: I am afraid I have to differ. Without the help of the tense-changing process, the tense unnecessarily adds suffering to those who honestly want to understand it. Some scholars have to ease off the sufferings by admitting they don't know how to define it themselves. See "2.7 The torment of the Present Perfect tense":
== http://www.englishtense.com/newapproach/2_7.htm

Judging from the tense-changing process, we see Present Perfect can be same as either Simple Past or Simple Present. If you define Present Perfect alone, any ONE definition cannot be alright, and yet cannot be all wrong. It must be 50% correct, and 50% incorrect. But when we compare Present Perfect with other tense, then it is a mess.

However, by putting sentences together, I can use time relations to explain the tense easily:
"To us, in a paragraph, the use of the three tenses above can be as simple as this:
-- Simple Present indicates present time.
-- Simple Past indicates past time.
-- Present Perfect indicates the time between past and present.
What else is simpler than this? Most important, I need only two notions of time, and dispense with many jargons."
== http://www.englishtense.com/newapproach/AtAGlance.htm

<< If this year is 2005, "in the past five years" is another way to say "since 2000". It seems no readers questioning this equation. >>

Some comments can be made.

Simply put, Latin has five daughters. The four beautiful natural born daughters are French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. The ugly stepchild is Romanian.

Geoff_One,

Didn't I say "It seems no readers questioning this equation"?

The New Approach at a glance

Tenses are used to arrange the time sequence of many sentences in a writing. Tenses are not used to tell the time of a single sentence. Therefore, it is a mistake to single out one sentence, and analyze its tense. On such one-sentence basis, the tense doesn't function. There is no time relation in it and we cannot use tense to arrange anything. That is why, I think, conventional grammars have wrongly explained English tense, for they have always used examples on one-sentence basis. The result is, even deep learners have to openly admit they cannot explain tense:
== http://www.englishtense.com/newapproach/2_7.htm

On one-sentence basis, the tense doesn't function. When we talk about tense, we are only talking of the sentence:
== http://www.englishtense.com/newapproach/2_1.htm
The whole Chapter 2 of my book is pointing out the weak points on this crippled basis, depending on one sentence and one tense.

I therefore explain tenses by the paragraph:
== http://www.englishtense.com/newapproach/3_3_9.htm
By paragraph, I just throw a contrast with one-sentence basis. Simply putting two or three sentences together may form a time sequence, and we may arrange tenses to clarify the time relation between them. It is then we see the true use of tense.

If one finds it cumbersome to use a long paragraph to explain the time relations, one may still combine at least two sentences, preferably with different tenses, so one is able to tell the time relations between sentences. There may be many combinations mixed up from various tenses:
== http://www.englishtense.com/newapproach/3_3_1.htm

My breakthrough is, I have found out we may use only two notions of time, past and present, to explain all kinds of tenses. As for Present Progressive and Perfect Progressive actions, they are parts of the Simple Present action:
== http://www.englishtense.com/newapproach/7_1.htm

What about Future Tense? The future is overlapped with the present; the time concept of a future action is same as that of a present one. Simply put, Simple Present and Future Tense are of the same time, but of different kinds of certainty:
== http://www.englishtense.com/newapproach/8.htm
The future is a possibility, strictly a present possibility. There are different shades of possibility, which beget synonyms like doubt, guess, or uncertainty.

My insight for the Future Tense is, if we now raise a doubt about the past, it is actually a present doubt, rather a past doubt. It is a present guess at the past. Conventionally, however, this has been wrongly regarded as a doubt in the past:
Ex: He would have seen the letter yesterday.
== Now we know that it is actually a doubt at present, rather a yesterday's doubt.
Since it is a present doubt, the action is still realized only in the future -- maybe you will know the true action next week. Then its tense is also Future Tense, even referring to the past, and even with past time adverbials like Yesterday, Last Week. More reasoning will be seen here:
== http://www.englishtense.com/newapproach/8_3.htm

Furthermore, I have separated two kinds of backgrounds -- present background and past background:
== http://www.englishtense.com/newapproach/5_1.htm
-- In present background, as in a commentary, Present Perfect and Simple Past express their time relations to Simple Present.
-- In past background, as in a storybook, Past Perfect and Past Progressive express their time relations to Simple Past.
In this case, we can still explain all kinds of tenses by merely two notions of time: present and past.

Opinion is welcome.

I claim that tense has no relation to any meaning. Tense is used to express time, and time only. Any objection? Your opinion is welcome.

I have said above: "What about Future Tense? The future is overlapped with the present; the time concept of a future action is same as that of a present one. Simply put, Simple Present and Future Tense are of the same time, but of different kinds of certainty."

This explains why no one can tell the difference between the present and the future. Only future action and present action have difference.

The following is considered as good usage, by many who
have a very good understading of English:

It is required yesterday.

Hereby I open the fifth hundred of replies in this long thread.
Long live, «A concept of time»!

Seriously, I think that engtense is hopeless, that is, it's impossible to argue him out of his opinion, irregardless of whether it's correct or not. His purpose in not to know the truth, but rather to promote his approach. Through semi-out-argueing native speakers he feels self-affirmation or something.

First, you tell untruth about the common approach:
«The conventional approach is, though not mentioned openly, learning how to cut out a sentence from a paragraph and examine its tense. Their examples on one-sentence basis are their evidence, being displayed in every grammar book.»


«Ex: He would have seen the letter yesterday.
It is not a yesterday's guess, as conventional grammars have thought it is. It is a present doubt to the past. Since it is a present doubt, it makes little difference from a present doubt about the future:
Ex: He will see the letter tomorrow.
The realization of both of them are also in the future. It is in the future we know whether they are an action or not, so they are future actions, thus in the Future Tense.»

Where do you see doubts here!? And I'd ask you to provide an example of a correct usage of the first sentense.

Let's consider a simple exmple: «I'll write the letter tomorrow». This means that at the moment of speech the author thinks he'll do it the next day.

It is his CURRENT opinion about a FUTURE state of the Universe. The action of writing the letter lies in the future (by the moment of speech), thus it's a future action.

«I wrote it yesterday» refers to a past action, which could have taken place or not. In the latter case — «I didn't write it yesterday» — this one also refers to a past action: it denies the action's existence. «There was no such an action at the indicated moment of the past».

«I am writing a letter now» refers to a present action, because the current state (or "snapshot") of the Universe contains the author sitting somwhere at his table and writing a letter.

And you say that
«The future is overlapped with the present; the time concept of a future action is same as that of a present one. Simply put, Simple Present and Future Tense are of the same time, but of different kinds of certainty.»

The future is overlapping with the present? I am pretty sure an overwhelming majority of physicians and philosophers won't agree. And they have good reasons for that...

Now it is 09.05.06 18:24:59 (Moscow). And that means that everything before this moment is in the PAST, everything after it is in the FUTURE, and the moment itself (not the one-second interval, but literally a moment) is NOW.

Ok. Read these:
1. «I am sure I am typing this sentence now, at 09.05.06 18:33:59 (Moscow) »
2. «I am not in the least sure you are the last Geoff_One's post on Antimoon in your "A concept of time" thread»

Both senteces are in Present Progressive, although they exhibit different degrees of certainity. The same can be said about a pair of sentences in Simple Future.

As I understand, you concept is one of both teses and time, and that's bad, because time is a fundamental invariant of nature, while tenses are just part of a language. How can you talk about both of them together, calling the common concepts of both in question?

Ant_222 wrote:
<<Let's consider a simple exmple: «I'll write the letter tomorrow». This means that at the moment of speech the author thinks he'll do it the next day.

It is his CURRENT opinion about a FUTURE state of the Universe.>>

My reply: Must I talk of the Universe?

I wrote: «Ex: He would have seen the letter yesterday.
It is not a yesterday's guess, as conventional grammars have thought it is. It is a present doubt to the past. Since it is a present doubt, it makes little difference from a present doubt about the future:
Ex: He will see the letter tomorrow.
The realization of both of them are also in the future. It is in the future we know whether they are an action or not, so they are future actions, thus in the Future Tense.»

You challenged:
<<Where do you see doubts here!? And I'd ask you to provide an example of a correct usage of the first sentense.>>

My reply:
So, according to your idea, "He would have seen the letter yesterday" is not a doubt. Am I correct? Is it a certainty, may I ask again?

By the way, you have too often spelled 'sentence' as sentense. It seems to me that 'sentenCe' is the correct use. We are both not English native speakers. I am afraid you don't need to trust your intuition much more than mine.

Ant_222 wrote:
<<Ok. Read these:
1. «I am sure I am typing this sentence now, at 09.05.06 18:33:59 (Moscow) »
2. «I am not in the least sure you are the last Geoff_One's post on Antimoon in your "A concept of time" thread»

Both senteces are in Present Progressive, although they exhibit different degrees of certainity. The same can be said about a pair of sentences in Simple Future.>>

My reply:
Try 'sentences', not senteces.
Try 'certainty', not certainity.