English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

jlliagre

22:00

@Cerberus Germany?

tchrist

@Idon'tknowwhoIam. In spoken French, the passé composé, which is a present perfect and a compound tense, is now the de-facto completed past. In literary and older French, the passé simple did that job.

alphabet

Really, English has two tenses: present and past. It also has a number of catenative verbs (e.g. have, keep, continue) whose meanings relate to time or aspect in various ways. But "has succeeded" is no more a form of the verb "succeed" than "keeps succeeding" is.

Cerberus

@jlliagre Spoiler.

tchrist

Both "I saw" and "I have seen" have the perfect aspect in that they mean a discrete completed event that happened in the past.

If that is what you mean, then you are technically correct. :)

jlliagre

@tchrist Il le fit, ce job, indeed.

tchrist

22:02

Yes. It's a done deed.

I don't know who I am.

@tchrist I am out of sources right now. Can you go through Cambridge Dictionary? They say simple perfect tense and some examples are like this. Our students were taught about Present Perfect Tense. Now the problem lies in the word "Simple" here?

tchrist

Romance preterites derive from the Latin simple perfect.

I don't know who I am.

Simple Perfect Tense vs present perfect tense.

tchrist

@Idon'tknowwhoIam. I'm not very fond of that dictionary, so I do not know my way around it.

Perfection doth no tense make.

jlliagre

@Cerberus spoiler

Cerberus

22:03

@tchrist Educated people still use the passé simple!

tchrist

It's an aspect, damn it, not a tense. Tense is about time. Perfection is completion.

@Cerberus Yes, formally.

alphabet

@Idon'tknowwhoIam. Online dictionaries are not reliable sources for English grammar, not even for the sort of traditional grammar taught to EFL students.

tchrist

Think about the French imperfect past.

I don't know who I am.

@alphabet You mean to say Cambridge Dictionary is not authentic?

alphabet

@Idon'tknowwhoIam. What do you mean by "authentic"?

jlliagre

22:06

@Cerberus Orally in a spontaneous conversation, that would be hard to find.

I don't know who I am.

As you mentioned earlier, online dictionaries are not reliable.

For English grammar, I mean.

So, what's reliable to you? @alphabet

Cerberus

@jlliagre My friend says he uses it!

jlliagre

Liar.

Cerberus

Haha.

I'm sure people would also call me a liar for telling them there are people who use any of the 1000 things Tchrist uses.

I don't know who I am.

Who is spoiler here?😉

I am not sure why actually someone is being called spoiler here.

Cerberus

22:08

Mitch and Alphabet may deny such usage whenever they haven't seen it with their own eyes.

alphabet

@Idon'tknowwhoIam. Textbooks or other well-respected teaching materials would be more reliable, I'd assume, and they'd be more likely to use consistent terminology.

Cerberus

@Idon'tknowwhoIam. "Spoiler" is used as a way to hide text that would spoil a game for others if they read it.

jlliagre

@Cerberus Or someone from the Académie Française. I suspect they still use it when chatting.

I don't know who I am.

Oh, I see. @Cerberus. I thought he spoiled something else.😉

@alphabet

Cerberus

@jlliagre Voilà!

I don't know who I am.

22:10

Recommend any grammar book.

Cerberus

@Idon'tknowwhoIam. When you hover over those links, you can see the hidden text.

jlliagre

@Cerberus Attention, ils sont immortels !

I don't know who I am.

I see but I am using this side by using my phone.

That's why I am unable to attach anything here.

alphabet

@Idon'tknowwhoIam. For teaching EFL? You could try asking ELL.

I don't know who I am.

@alphabet Do they have a side to discuss English grammar?

Actually I am a little more confused about grammar as it is taught in Asian countries. So, some students face challenges when learning it.

alphabet

22:12

@Idon'tknowwhoIam. They accept grammar questions, yes.

tchrist

Hoy me rindo.
Ayer me rendí.
Yo me rendía cuando llegaron.
Ya me estaba rindiendo cuando llegaron.
Siempre me he rendido.
Mucho antes ya me había rendido.
Apenas me hube rendido cuando disparon.
Mañana me rendiré.
El día siguiente me habré rendido.
Ahora me doy por vencido.

Which of those is a perfect? :)

alphabet

@Idon'tknowwhoIam. I assume you're a non-native speaker teaching English as a foreign language in an Asian country?

tchrist

There's no imperfect, you'll notice.

I don't know who I am.

Yes, I am not a native speaker. That's why I sometimes cannot distinguish between things. @alphabet

tchrist

Ayer yo me rendía cuando se me quitaron la lengua, de ahí que no pasó nada.

Cerberus

22:14

@jlliagre J'espère!

I don't know who I am.

I remember when I has teacher Stony Bay and others who used to help me when I was 16.

tchrist

Yesterday I was surrendering when they cut my tongue out, so nothing happened.

The first verb is imperfect, the second and third are perfect. Aspectually.

In both languages.

I don't know who I am.

I had joined this site long ago.

@alphabet There is no one in that room right now. I found this side most active.

alphabet

@Idon'tknowwhoIam. Press the "Ask Question" button. But your question may get migrated to the meta site or what have you.

tchrist

Expectans expectavi. That's a simple perfect. :)

I don't know who I am.

22:17

Mars, Stoney Bay and Fleming used to help me with grammar. I lost them on this site.

alphabet

One would hope that, when you accepted your current job, you were given a textbook to use or a pre-established curriculum to follow, no?

tchrist

In English, the one-word past tense usually indicates a completed action in the past. Sometimes, however, it does not.

It is not like French or Spanish in this regard, which both have a distinct imperfect past that they can use.

So English must convey imperfection in other ways, such as by using a compound continuous form like was surrendering.

But it needn't always do so. THe context often suffices.

Different materials for learners simplify the English verbal constructions in various and conflicting ways that are meant to be easier for learners to understand.

There is no unified nomenclature for this.

One thing I have noticed in learners' materials is that they make far too great a matter about perfect constructions, leading learners into false assumptions about how natives really speak and think.

In general, we avoid compound verbs when simple verbs will do. It's easier for us.

We do not operate under formal rules about any of this. But learners are led to believe that we do, and they are themselves certainly expected to do so. It's a shame, really.

Cerberus

@tchrist Yes, and even then the criteria for the tenses are very fluid and hard to apply for them.

@tchrist This may be true.

Caveat: American tend to use the present perfect less.

But the continuous more...

I don't know who I am.

@tchrist How can we identify aspect and tense in the sentences?

tchrist

A little bit less, yes. But not so much less as it is routinely presented.

@Idon'tknowwhoIam. Tense is simple: it's either past tense or it is not.

I don't know who I am.

22:25

How about aspect?

tchrist

Expllcit aspect is also pretty easy. Implicit aspect is the hard thing.

alphabet

@Cerberus Certain British-made learners' materials seem to massively overstate this difference between dialects.

Cerberus

@alphabet Quite possibly!

I don't know who I am.

What's explicit aspect again?

tchrist

I eat peas. I am eating peas. I ate peas when I was a child.

I don't know who I am.

22:27

These form tenses.

How should I identify aspects in the tenses?

tchrist

Explicit aspect happens when there is a present or past participle involved in the compound verb.

Then you know which aspect is mean.

alphabet

English doesn't really have "aspect" in the way that some languages do. It's not like Latin, where there are "perfect" and "imperfect" inflectional forms.

I don't know who I am.

Jot down some examples of explicit aspect, @tchris.

tchrist

But when I saw "I hate peas" or "Peas taste good" you cannot tell that has an implicit aspect the way you can see the explicit aspect in "I have eaten peas" or "I was eating peas" or "Peas have always tasted good".

"I'm eating supper now" has an explicit aspect. "I ate supper late that night", less so but it's still there.

The first is an incomplete action; the second, completed.

The first is not finished.

I don't know who I am.

Aight!

Cerberus

22:31

One question is: can aspect be said to be a property of the praedicate, or only of the verb? Of the finite verb, or of the compound verb?

tchrist

But "I eat supper at 6 every night" is something else again. It is not the "normal" present.

Cerberus

You don't even need the temporal reference there.

tchrist

@Cerberus I think participles are non-finite forms of the verb that can have an aspect.

Cerberus

We eat supper in the dining room.

tchrist

Yes.

We use the present tense in English very strangely compared to almost any other European language.

Cerberus

22:33

@tchrist I would say so. Though perhaps the same participle may not convey the same aspect in every sentence it can be used in?

I don't know who I am.

Means they really show actions and form tense?

jlliagre

@Cerberus Spoiler

Cerberus

@tchrist I wasn't going to say.

@jlliagre Hmm can it only have been there?

tchrist

It's all monoglot anglophones know. This is why they have so hard of a time unbecoming monoglots. :)

I don't know who I am.

How many native speakers are in this platform?

alphabet

22:35

Present participles (ones ending in "-ing") are not always interpreted as continuous in aspect.

E.g.: "Anyone finishing the race in under an hour will receive a $1000 prize."

tchrist

Full disclosure: I only know a few branches of European languages, the Germanic and Romance ones. I do not know the Slavic or Celtic branches, nor much more than a smattering of Ancient Greek. I believe the English aspectual weirdness has been arguably traced to contact with the Celtic branch by the Germanic one.

alphabet

You can replace "finishing" with "who finishes," but not with "who is finishing."

Cerberus

@jlliagre Not saying you're wrong.

tchrist

@Idon'tknowwhoIam. Most people in this room know more than one language, and most have also spoken English for longer than many newcomers have been alive.

Cerberus

@alphabet Yeah, that is what I meant. Even so, I think it is not unreasonable to say that, in general, a progressive/continuous aspect is in present participles.

Not in gerunds btw.

tchrist

22:38

I feel like the threads are tangled beyond all repair.

Cerberus

Are they tangled, have they been tangled, or are they being tangled?

alphabet

@Cerberus Present-day English doesn't clearly distinguish present participles and gerunds; H&P use a single term ("gerund-participle") to cover both.

tchrist

Holy crap I just looked at the transcript and I am receiving barely 20% of @jlliagre's messages and maybe 60% of 70% of @Cerberus's. I give up.

alphabet

(Tchrist doesn't see my messages, so if we seem to be talking past each other, that's why.)

tchrist

Something in the software is too buggered here for me to communicate with you all. A thousand apologies. There's too much being dropped for me to be able to follow you guys.

I've never seen this happen before.

alphabet

22:41

If you ignore someone, do you also stop seeing posts that reply to that person? Maybe that'd explain it. But I'm guessing tchrist already checked that.

Cerberus

@alphabet As has been fought over many a time in this room.

tchrist

Pray continue to jabber away. I won't be able to see your messages, apparently, or not most of them. I have no idea why not. I'm going to go make supper.

I don't know who I am.

Hey, do we have Catja here? @alphabet & @tchrist?

Cerberus

@alphabet But gerunds generally don't have a continuous aspect, while participles generally do.

@tchrist Oh, huh!

tchrist

Like all those messages are ONLY IN THE TRANSCRIPT. They are not on this screen.

I'm going off to cook.

Cerberus

22:44

@tchrist So it is not about messages from me directed to someone you have put on ignore?

tchrist

@Cerberus Correct. It is not.

Cerberus

Most odd.

I do not remember encountering this myself.

Refreshing the page, does that bring back the lost messages?

tchrist

I'm missing most of the green newcomer's too.a

Let me exit and re-enter.

Nope. Still blocked.

jlliagre

@Cerberus Spoiler

Cerberus

@tchrist Refreshing the page?

tchrist

22:46

I did that. It did not work. I feel like the matrix is soft and wearing thin here.

Cerberus

@jlliagre I don't really know either. It may have happened in places that later ended up not switching to the new thing. And...there are places that did switch outside the big place that you mentioned.

tchrist

Nothing I do can make the Attention, ils sont immortels ! appear, nor many like it.

Cerberus

@tchrist Most odd!

As a test, maybe try a VPN?

tchrist

Hm.

wonders if he couldn't use the work VPN

I don't know who I am.

Good night, @everyone. It's too late. I'm going to hit the hay.

jlliagre

22:50

@tchrist Try removing the 'lame joke filter' plugin from your browser.

alphabet

Divine vengeance, that's the only explanation.

jlliagre

@Cerberus Spoiler

Cerberus

@jlliagre I believe that was part of the big place.

@tchrist Is it possible that putting users on Ignore messes things up for you?

@jlliagre By the way, I am by no means implying that the big place is wrong.

At any rate, I wouldn't be able to guess the country myself.

jlliagre

@Cerberus Spoiler

Cerberus

@jlliagre To the first, yes. To the latter: I didn't think of it that way, but you are right.

jlliagre

23:08

@Cerberus Spoiler

Cerberus

@jlliagre This was actually correct!

You it is a place where people were angry about that thing.

jlliagre

@Cerberus A blivet! Spoiler

Cerberus

23:28

@jlliagre Haha, yes, none of that.

So I guess you are as close as one could get.

You get 200/200!

I saw the image here: Spoiler.

Oh, about possible locations, there are too many: Spoiler.

jlliagre

@Cerberus That's an indulgent score. I didn't gave any date :-)

Robusto

@Cerberus Oh, Spoiler?

Oh, nah. I see now.

Cerberus

23:53

@jlliagre I think you did give something in the beginning?

@Robusto You got the century right!

But, yeah, it is kind of impossible to get the right place and get the right decade.

Robusto

@Cerberus Well, it could be just about anywhere in Europe in that century. But now I see a particular style of headwear that speaks, er, volumes.

Cerberus

Well, not quite anywhere.

Robusto

Perhaps not.

Cerberus

If you know what they are doing.

Robusto

Well, I presume it's destroying Roman Catholic icons.

Cerberus

23:56

Yeah.

Robusto

Lotta folks did that in the Protestant Reformation.

And I can't say I blame them. But they didn't go far enough, IMO.

jlliagre

In France, Catholics were destroying people, not icons...

Transcript for

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…