Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Christian <jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com>]

Hi,

2010/2/1 K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>

> James:
>
> On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 2:03 AM, James Christian
> <jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com>wrote:
>
> >
> > (2) John works at the factory
> >
> > This expresses both past, present and future.
> >
>
> No, this does not express either past nor future, merely ongoing activity.
> One minute later he could be fired. English does not grammaticalize aspect.
>
>
Let's alter the sentence slightly to indicate the sense I meant:

(2a) John works at the factory every day

This is unambiguously a repeated action. John could be fired any minute yes
but there is a disctinct difference between:

(2a) John works at the factory every day
(2b) John is working at the factory at this moment in time

The first includes the past, the present and (we would expect) the future.
The second is limited to the present (but nonetheless ongoing)


> >
> > (3) And so after he went into the bar he goes up to the barman and orders
> a
> > pint
> >
> > These express actions in the past.
> >
>
> Back when I attended grade school, were I to write such a sentence without
> quotes around it to indicate an exact quote, including grammatical errors,
> the teacher would have marked it, and reduced the score I received for the
> paper. To avoid a negative result on my grade, I was taught to write the
> above sentence as follows: “And so after he went into the bar, he went up
> to
> the barman and ordered a pint.”
>
> I was taught that in English, the proper way to indicate the subjunctive is
> to use “the third person past tense”, no matter who is the subject, the
> exceptions were the use of verbs that indicate the subjunctive, such as
> “would” and “could have”. But such is the decrease in educational standards
> that many children are no longer taught rules such as those concerning the
> subjunctive and tense consistency as illustrated by the above examples.
>
>
Natural languages, very much like children, don't obey grammar taught in
schools as 'standard' grammar. Natural languages are living and they evolve
and their natural grammar is inducted by its native users from examples.
Sentences of the type I quoted, whether your teacher likes it or not, are
prevalent in the English language and therefore have a rightful place in its
natural grammar.


> >
> > (4) And so when you come to me you can check.
> >
> > This expresses something that will happen in the future
> >
>
> I was taught that this is an infinitive, where the “to” is not necessary
> because of the “can” immediately preceding it.
>
>
Actually I meant the 'you come'. I hope you can agree that this is clearly
expressing an event in the future.

James Christian