ELL's Cabin

Damkerng T.

16:32

Hello, ELL's Cabin!

Anonymous

16:54

waves

Damkerng T.

@snailboat smiles and waves

Anonymous

Hello, robot!

Damkerng T.

Hello! I hope the Cabin is still doing fine, even though I haven't seen anything much lately.

So I think I'll try to say hello when N day(s) later... shows up.

IͶΔ

@DamkerngT. ' ELLO

Damkerng T.

'ELLO!

Anonymous

17:05

It looks like we almost had a discussion about the status of will as a modal auxiliary in English.

Damkerng T.

nods -- The last week highlight!

Anonymous

I will eat pizza tomorrow. I would eat pizza tomorrow. I may eat pizza tomorrow. I might eat pizza tomorrow. I can eat pizza tomorrow. I could eat pizza tomorrow. I shall eat pizza tomorrow. I should eat pizza tomorrow. I must eat pizza tomorrow.

IͶΔ

@snailboat Whoa, I bet that's more pizzas than you had in your life.

9 pizzas!

Anonymous

Can we legitimately call only one of these constructions the "future tense"? If so, why?

IͶΔ

> I will eat pizza tomorrow.

Anonymous

17:08

It's clear that all of the examples locate the time of eating in the future.

Damkerng T.

Hmm... but the main verb doesn't change its form.

IͶΔ

This is present future noncontinuous imperfect textbook tense.

I like it how I'm much easier doing with Arabic tenses.

They're much less inflectional, and no future tense.

Anonymous

True future tenses are fairly rare.

IͶΔ

0

Q: Who provides oversight of the politics.stackexchange.com site?

I have noticed a trend on Politics.SE that questions and comments that reflect negatively on Trump are mysteriously disappearing. Are there areas of London the police are afraid to enter? (showed as closed as Opinion Based on Android, appears to have been re-opened) What exactly did Donald Trum...

Anonymous

There's a politics.SE??

IͶΔ

17:12

Yeah, I dunno how that site hasn't still drown in flame wars.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat What if it were I'm having pizza tomorrow?

Anonymous

Equally futurive, equally tensey. :-)

IͶΔ

@DamkerngT. That's less future than the "will" version in my mind.

Anonymous

The futurive progressive is fairly limited compared to our modal futurive constructions, though.

Anonymous

The futurive use of the simple present is fairly limited: The Lakers play the Bulls tomorrow.

Damkerng T.

17:21

I remember that I've read something about Chinese people and English speakers think of the future differently (because of the languages).

Anonymous

I remember that too, though I'm always skeptical of that sort of publication.

IͶΔ

What about Thai speakers?

Damkerng T.

@IͶΔ Hmm... Thai has no (lexical) tense, so maybe Thai is closer to Chinese languages in this respect.

IͶΔ

@DamkerngT. O_O

DEFINE FUTURE

404 -- NOT FOUND

Damkerng T.

Hmm... tomorrow is a bit more tangible in Chinese and Thai, I think.

Damkerng T.

19:22

It looks like our discussion on future tenses was left unfinished.

IͶΔ

I'm right here Waves

Damkerng T.

I wonder if we can finish it ourselves.

IͶΔ

Lady, this vacuum sucks!

CC @Dam @Snail

Damkerng T.

It seems like the heart of the problem lies in whether or not will is a future tense.

IͶΔ

Yes.

No.

The heart of the problem is what tense means to each of us.

How do we define tense?

Damkerng T.

19:25

My cat always runs away when I turn on my vacuum. ( ＾◡＾)

@IͶΔ Inflected forms indicating time?

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Well, will is clearly a modal auxiliary.

IͶΔ

What method do we use to recognize tense?

Anonymous

The question is how you want to talk about tense – is the construction with will in modal auxiliary position a future tense construction?

Damkerng T.

Most of the time, I think.

Anonymous

Hmm, that answer doesn't fit the theoretical question I had in mind.

Anonymous

19:26

Let's start out by talking about what tense is.

Anonymous

Tense is a term that refers to how utterances locate situations in time.

Anonymous

You can use a broad definition of tense, the semantic property of location in time.

Damkerng T.

By that definition, a language such as Thai or Chinese would also has tenses.

Anonymous

It's a common definition, but not the only one.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Right, folks who use that definition think that every language has tense.

Anonymous

19:29

The more narrow definition of tense relates to grammatical forms that serve to locate situations in time.

Damkerng T.

But sometimes the location in time is so vague. (Hmm... maybe it can be as vague as the present tenses in English.)

Anonymous

This narrow definition can be subdivided into a couple types:

Anonymous

① Morphologically marked location in time. Walk and walked differ by morphological marking, and the primary function of this marking is to locate situations in time.

Anonymous

② Any form that marks location in time, including analytic marking with auxiliaries. Using this definition, we can consider whether will and have are tense markers.

Anonymous

So we can break down the definitions of tense by looking at (A) whether they're semantic or grammatical, and (B) whether they focus on morphology or more general grammatical marking.

Anonymous

19:32

So you can see from the variety of definitions in common use that, if we argue over whether will is a marker of future tense without first agreeing on what tense means, we'll simply be running in circles.

Damkerng T.

Indeed.

Anonymous

I follow Huddleston & Pullum in using time to refer to the semantic dimension and tense to refer to a matter of grammatical form.

IͶΔ

Bookmarking @Snail

Anonymous

Huddleston & Pullum do not use the requirement that tense be marked morphologically, as some linguists do.

Anonymous

If you do, the answer is fairly clear – English has at most two morphologically marked tenses, present and past.

Anonymous

19:34

Semantically, like any language, it's capable of expressing past, present, and future time.

Anonymous

Grammatically, it has any number of constructions which interact with the semantic dimension of time.

Anonymous

Even allowing analytic tense, we can still choose whether to accept or reject will as a marker of future tense.

Anonymous

After all, will can be used with present time reference, and we can use future time reference without will.

Damkerng T.

He could be there now ← present? -- He could be here tomorrow ← future?

Anonymous

Sure, in the semantic dimension of time reference.

Anonymous

19:36

Could there is primarily a modal marker.

Anonymous

Will can do the same thing.

Anonymous

Will is syntactically and semantically in the class of modal auxiliaries, but the kind of modality it expresses is often fairly weak.

Anonymous

So it's only natural that it's come to conventionally appear in clauses expressing future time.

Anonymous

There's a close relationship between epistemic modality and future tense because the future is, in general, uncertain.

Anonymous

But will has never become an obligatory marker of future time, and other modal auxiliaries can do the same thing, and we can still express future time without any modal auxiliary.

Anonymous

19:42

On the other hand, we might also want to look at have as a marker of tense.

Anonymous

We usually talk about the "perfect" auxiliary have, and the perfect is often considered a kind of aspect.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat That's probably one the most confusing things most learners would find when they found out that we can express the future in a present tense.

Anonymous

Aspect is how events unfold in time, or how they're organized in time, rather than where they're located in time: beginning, ending, repeated, ongoing, over in an instant.

4

Damkerng T.

@snailboat have alone or something like will have VERBed?

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. The perfect auxiliary have, with or without will.

Anonymous

19:44

The perfect is sometimes also called the anterior because it serves to locate one situation in time before another.

GforOevOerD

Hi there

Anonymous

But wait! Isn't that what we suggested a tense does?

Anonymous

@GforOevOerD Hello! Welcome to ELL chat :-)

GforOevOerD

There are some sentences that need to be checked. I would appreciate anyone who could help me.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat It sounds almost like a relative tense!

@GforOevOerD What is it?

Anonymous

19:45

@DamkerngT. Linguists do talk about relative and absolute tense.

GforOevOerD

@snailboat Thank you so much.

Here are the sentences :

IͶΔ

Hullo @Gfor! Welcome to ELL's Cabin

Anonymous

An anterior tense is a relative past tense.

GforOevOerD

1 : Why were you so upset last Friday? Because I had lost my money

@IͶΔ Thank you so much.

Anonymous

See, here had would locate the situation "I lost my money" before another point in time. It's not really necessary to do so here, though.

GforOevOerD

19:48

@snailboat I thought same. Because all of other sentences that I'm going to post

Can also be answered by using simple past

@snailboat Is it correct : " Why were you so upset last Friday? Because I lost my money

Anonymous

Sounds fine. You're not quite using punctuation properly, but the words are fine :-)

GforOevOerD

@snailboat Do you mean the period that I forgot to add at the end of the sentence?

IͶΔ

@GforOevOerD No, the quotation mark \

,

'

GforOevOerD

@IͶΔ Is it okay now? "Why were you so upset last Friday? Because I lost my money"

IͶΔ

Even okayer with a period. :)

GforOevOerD

19:52

@IͶΔ Oh I'm so sorry, " Why were you so upset last Friday? Because I lost my money."

Anonymous

Yeah, you should add a period and a question mark. You also put a space before the colon and after the opening quote, and those spaces shouldn't be there.

IͶΔ

And honestly you're the first first-timer I see care about punctuation.

Anonymous

But punctuation is less important than getting the words right :-)

IͶΔ

@GforOevOerD Omit the space before "why" and you're good to go. :)

Anonymous

After all, you don't speak punctuation.

Anonymous

19:53

Since we're just chatting here, the punctuation doesn't really matter too much.

Anonymous

I'm only pointing it out because you asked :-)

IͶΔ

@snailboat You chat punctuation

Anonymous

@IͶΔ Once in a while, I do.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I do, when I use a voice input!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. You are technically correct, the best kind of correct!

GforOevOerD

19:55

"Why were you so upset last Friday? Because I lost my money."

Anonymous

@GforOevOerD Looks good :-)

IͶΔ

@DamkerngT. (/¯◡ ‿ ◡)/¯ ~ ┻━┻

GforOevOerD

I don't know how to appreciate you guys for caring and great answers.

IͶΔ

@GforOevOerD BTW, blockquotes work in chat.

> Why were you upset last Friday?
> Because I lost my money.

Anonymous

@IͶΔ Backticks only work in single-line messages. To make an entire message "preformatted", add four spaces at the beginning of each line.

Damkerng T.

19:57

@snailboat I wish the voice inputs could guess the punctuation by our intonation.

GforOevOerD

@IͶΔ I don't know the key that corresponds to blockquote

IͶΔ

@snailboat I did. It didn't like my spaces, so it still rendered as blockquote.

@GforOevOerD >

GforOevOerD

@IͶΔ Thanks!

Anonymous

@IͶΔ You used backticks!

IͶΔ

@snailboat I mean after the edit

Anonymous

19:58

Oh, now I want to try it.

Anonymous

> Testing.
> Testing.

Anonymous

It worked! :-)

IͶΔ

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

This is discrimination against chemicals!

Damkerng T.

( ＾◡＾)

GforOevOerD

2. Why didn't he watch TV yesterday? Because he had not finished his homework. I think this could also be answered like "Because he didn't finish his homework.".

Damkerng T.

20:06

Others could answer this question better than me. My idea is when there are more than one possible choice, choosing any choice is a great way to reveal who you are.

IͶΔ

@GforOevOerD Sure.

A golden rule about tense is

> Don't nitpick about tense.

Since there's usually a lot of context needed, and almost any sentence can work in the right context.

We need to know what the context is.

In one, "he didn't . . . " is weird and unacceptable, in another the other.

GforOevOerD

21:17

@DamkerngT. Thanks

@IͶΔ Thanks

@IͶΔ But why is "he didn't . . ." unacceptable?

Damkerng T.

You're welcome!

He isn't here, so I'll answer that in the meanwhile. His idea is it may be okay in one context, but it might not in another.

GforOevOerD

@DamkerngT. Oh thank you!

Damkerng T.

No problem. ^_^

Anonymous

21:38

Do you suppose the speaker might have finished his homework later on?

Anonymous

> Because he hadn't finished his homework yet.

Anonymous

What if you said:

Anonymous

> Because he didn't finish his homework yet.

Anonymous

That would be strange.

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