Friday, September 10, 2004, 19:12 GMT
Hello, everybody!
«You can use whichever tenses you want to express yourself. I can only describe my own usage, which correlates very highly with that of other native speakers... Either way, it's your choice.» (Mxsmanic)
I have already understood that I can choose tenses on my own, basing on my perception of the event. I'am asking questions because just what I want is to express thoughts as native spekers do (at least choice of tenses).
«I'd like to suggest that the Past Simple, when used to report an event, "cuts a slice out of time". By that I mean that the use of the Past Simple puts temporal limits, both before and after, on the activity or event expressed by the verb.»
Here I'd like to make the following note. Probably, the following example will be considered as a correct usage of the Present Perfect by most people on this thread.
A teacher gave an exercise to his students, which is to be made at the lesson. After 15 minutes passed, he asks: "Well, have anybody finished?"
Here the event of finishing the exercise has certain temporal limits: since the moment he gave them the exercise till the current moment. Hence, the statments
«In it's journey into the past, the Present Perfect reaches an infinite distance!» (about the Present Perfect) and
«We want to show that we are limiting just how far back in time we are willing to go in referring to the event.»
are not fully correct.
The lower time limit is set explicitly in the following: «What have been done in quantum mechanics since 1954?»
But by this I do not reject the guidelines given. I just want to show that they are useless when are applied seperately from each other. But when a problem is considered with the help of the totality of theese guidelines, and when we don't treat them in a true-false way, only then they gain real power.
By using a set of guidelines we reduce fuzziness. The true-false philosophy fully gets rid of fuzziness by rounding off all the logical variables to only two values. But this method results in very high inaccuracies because every variable can assume an infinite quantity of values. Everybody knows that, in order to get the result with n precise decimals, the calculations should be made with at least (n+1) decimals in the values involved. The true-false method implies calculations with all the variables already rounded off.
In general, I like this Jim's explanation.
Of all the guidelines offered (I call them so to put emphasis on their fuzziness which was lost when the quite precise indivisible mental notion of the Present Perfect was translated to a more prmitive verbal form as a set of certain statements) I have found one to be the best for the streaker case (which doesn't mean that only this one should be applied): we individuate the vent. We saw it, and then, speak about what we saw, e.g. about a certain event. It works well (along with my proposal about indication of time) in the cases like:
«Governation' made its premiere last night on the big screen. Did you catch it?» (Mi5 Mick) Here, before we asked about the event, we had singularized it. Both the inquirer and his interlocutor are aware of the event discussed. But in the streaker case only the inquirer surely knows about the event. That have been the main sticking point to me. Can we consider it singularized when we do not know if our intercilluctor knows of it? I incline that, nevertheless, it is just what is applicable here.
«...the well-known rule that the Past Simple can occur with adverb phrases of specific time (yesterday, an hour ago, when I realized that I was late, etc.), but that the Present Perfect cannot occur with such phrases, but must be combined with adverbs like "ever" and "yet".» (Jim)
As Jim has shown (or showed?), this "rule" follows from the time limit criteria. So, to have less inaccuracies, we should use not the colloratory but it's source. The colloratary, when being formulated, gained new inaccuracies due to the nature of the formulating process. Furthermore, the source of colloratory is more easy to understand and to remember because it is more logical, more closely connected to the primary mental notion.
Don't I bother you a lot with such long postings? Are they of interest to you?
Anton.
«You can use whichever tenses you want to express yourself. I can only describe my own usage, which correlates very highly with that of other native speakers... Either way, it's your choice.» (Mxsmanic)
I have already understood that I can choose tenses on my own, basing on my perception of the event. I'am asking questions because just what I want is to express thoughts as native spekers do (at least choice of tenses).
«I'd like to suggest that the Past Simple, when used to report an event, "cuts a slice out of time". By that I mean that the use of the Past Simple puts temporal limits, both before and after, on the activity or event expressed by the verb.»
Here I'd like to make the following note. Probably, the following example will be considered as a correct usage of the Present Perfect by most people on this thread.
A teacher gave an exercise to his students, which is to be made at the lesson. After 15 minutes passed, he asks: "Well, have anybody finished?"
Here the event of finishing the exercise has certain temporal limits: since the moment he gave them the exercise till the current moment. Hence, the statments
«In it's journey into the past, the Present Perfect reaches an infinite distance!» (about the Present Perfect) and
«We want to show that we are limiting just how far back in time we are willing to go in referring to the event.»
are not fully correct.
The lower time limit is set explicitly in the following: «What have been done in quantum mechanics since 1954?»
But by this I do not reject the guidelines given. I just want to show that they are useless when are applied seperately from each other. But when a problem is considered with the help of the totality of theese guidelines, and when we don't treat them in a true-false way, only then they gain real power.
By using a set of guidelines we reduce fuzziness. The true-false philosophy fully gets rid of fuzziness by rounding off all the logical variables to only two values. But this method results in very high inaccuracies because every variable can assume an infinite quantity of values. Everybody knows that, in order to get the result with n precise decimals, the calculations should be made with at least (n+1) decimals in the values involved. The true-false method implies calculations with all the variables already rounded off.
In general, I like this Jim's explanation.
Of all the guidelines offered (I call them so to put emphasis on their fuzziness which was lost when the quite precise indivisible mental notion of the Present Perfect was translated to a more prmitive verbal form as a set of certain statements) I have found one to be the best for the streaker case (which doesn't mean that only this one should be applied): we individuate the vent. We saw it, and then, speak about what we saw, e.g. about a certain event. It works well (along with my proposal about indication of time) in the cases like:
«Governation' made its premiere last night on the big screen. Did you catch it?» (Mi5 Mick) Here, before we asked about the event, we had singularized it. Both the inquirer and his interlocutor are aware of the event discussed. But in the streaker case only the inquirer surely knows about the event. That have been the main sticking point to me. Can we consider it singularized when we do not know if our intercilluctor knows of it? I incline that, nevertheless, it is just what is applicable here.
«...the well-known rule that the Past Simple can occur with adverb phrases of specific time (yesterday, an hour ago, when I realized that I was late, etc.), but that the Present Perfect cannot occur with such phrases, but must be combined with adverbs like "ever" and "yet".» (Jim)
As Jim has shown (or showed?), this "rule" follows from the time limit criteria. So, to have less inaccuracies, we should use not the colloratory but it's source. The colloratary, when being formulated, gained new inaccuracies due to the nature of the formulating process. Furthermore, the source of colloratory is more easy to understand and to remember because it is more logical, more closely connected to the primary mental notion.
Don't I bother you a lot with such long postings? Are they of interest to you?
Anton.