A concept of time

John   Fri Mar 30, 2007 3:13 am GMT
Oh hi engtense
Josh Lalonde   Fri Mar 30, 2007 1:35 pm GMT
<<Teachers and students have been wailing at such vagueness as yours, and you enjoy such vagueness.

The trouble is, there are two kinds of actions that "occurred before the time of the utterance":
Ex: He has locked the door.
Ex: He locked the door.
Can you give a little empathy to those teachers and students? Can your argument give any slight help to differentiate the two tenses?>>

I thought I was pretty clear above, but I'll explain again. The English verb has several forms, which in traditional school grammars are called tenses. Linguists, however, would call many of them aspects. See this in the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_aspect#Aspect_in_English.
The difference between your two examples is basically one of aspect rather than tense. These sentences could easily refer to the same exact action, using different forms to indicate different ways of looking at it. For example:

He locked the door, then went to bed.
He has gone to bed, now that he has locked the door.

This is the same series of events, just described in a different way. *There does not have to be a difference in time between your examples.* This may make things a little harder for ESL students, but it allows us much greater flexibility and expressiveness.
Geoff_One   Fri Mar 30, 2007 10:23 pm GMT
<< I am sorry but I don't know what you are talking about, especially on "a number of times". If this is the best you can say among umpteenth times, the only place I can understand is your "possibly". >>

I am sorry, but this does not flow on properly from what was previously written and the background information. It is easier for me to read the postings (relative short postings) on this website that are in French and Spanish than it is to try and provide explanations to the likes of the above.

Please spend more time re-considering your reponse, edit it and re-submit.
Geoff_One   Fri Mar 30, 2007 10:49 pm GMT
<< Ex: He has locked the door. >>

I am likely to say the above in the following circumstance:

I am in the outside yard of a surburban home with two people, he and another person. The three of us are about to go out in a car. He has locked the door but has a habit of going back into the house to check things such as the gas stove. The other person raises a question about house security. I might say "He has locked the door".


<< Ex: He locked the door. >>

I am likely to say the above in the following circumstance:

I am in a car with two people, 50 kms from the door in question that is part of a house. I am driving the car, there is a person in the front passengers seat and he is in the back seat. The person in the front passengers seat raises a question about house security. I might say "He locked the door".
engtense   Sat Mar 31, 2007 9:43 pm GMT
Josh Lalonde wrote:
<<This is the same series of events, just described in a different way. *There does not have to be a difference in time between your examples.* This may make things a little harder for ESL students, but it allows us much greater flexibility and expressiveness.>>

My reply:
A little harder for ESL students?

You must think I, as an ESL, started to learn English tense merely yesterday, so I would believe what you say. Present Perfect is difficult, without respect to ESL or EFL. It is therefore more difficult to tell a difference between Present Perfect and Simple Past. I have pointed out that EFL scholars have admitted they don't know much about the tense, in "2.7 The torment of the Present Perfect tense":
http://www.englishtense.com/newapproach/2_7.htm

If you search exact match for "Present Perfect Puzzle", you will see a lot of university documents talking about the difficulty of the tense. They don't call it "Present Perfect Flexibility", do they? Why? Because they are ESLs?

In order to explain Present Perfect, grammars have to hide away the Past Family, please see 2.4 "Forbidden grammar: the Past Family":
http://www.englishtense.com/newapproach/2_4.htm
Does this imply it is a difficulty, or a flexibility to you? When will grammars level with ESL students?
engtense   Sat Mar 31, 2007 9:54 pm GMT
As for Aspect, as I have explained in "6.1 Aspect Theory hides more", some grammarians gamble that, since they themselves have already hidden the Past Family and there seems to be no objections, why don't they hide also "since 2000", so they may say Present Perfect is not a tense, but an aspect? They do, and there is Aspect Theory. Now they are happy and smiling, because they have found one more victim.

Aspect Theory hides both the Past Family and the pattern of "since 2000", and this is what you call "flexibility". It means it is flexible for grammars to hide anything from young students.

In the page you have pointed to us, try to search the word "since", and you know it hides the pattern of "since 2000":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_aspect#Aspect_in_English.
== In the long web page, there is not the word "since" mentioned, despite of so many Present Perfect examples listed there.

The pattern of "since 2000" is a notable time adverbial that favors Present Perfect, rather than Simple Past. It is a must in explaining Present Perfect. However, as "since 2000" mentions of time, which means Present Perfect is a tense, Aspect Theory has to make "since" disappear. Such concealment has fooled many amateurs.
engtense   Sat Mar 31, 2007 10:01 pm GMT
Your example is actually a misuse of Present Perfect:
<<?He has gone to bed, now that he has locked the door.>>
Present Perfect cannot link up closely-happened actions, so-called a series of actions. Only Simple Past can do so:
Ex1: He locked the door, then went to bed.
Ex2: He went to bed, now that he had locked the door.
Ex3: ?He has gone to bed, now that he has locked the door.
== See 3.2.1 "Only can Simple Past link up a series of actions":
http://www.englishtense.com/newapproach/3_2_1.htm

Present Perfect can only link up actions not closely happened:
Ex4: He has left the company, now that he has lost his faith at his colleagues.

It is a subject between experience and inexperience, rather than between EFL and ESL.
engtense   Sat Mar 31, 2007 10:06 pm GMT
Geoff_One wrote:
<<Please spend more time re-considering your reponse, edit it and re-submit.>>

My reply:
Your explanation is definitely for Simple Present, seeing the capitalized:
<<For The Umpteenth Time - In One Fashion Or Another
Eg 1: He has locked the door.
Eg 2: He locked the door.
Possibly in Eg 1, the "He" suffers from COMPULSIVE BEHAVIOUR DISORDER.
This "He" GOES back into the house A NUMBER OF TIMES to check things (eg the gas stove) and EACH TIME "He" COMES out, "He" LOCKS the door.>>

The fact that someone has locked the door, doesn't mean he suffers from compulsive behaviour disorder. But your "Possibly" allows you to claim any conjecture.

------------------
<<I am in the outside yard of a surburban home with two people, he and another person. The three of us are about to go out in a car. He has locked the door but has a habit of going back into the house to check things such as the gas stove. The other person raises a question about house security. I MIGHT say "He has locked the door".>>

<<I am in a car with two people, 50 kms from the door in question that is part of a house. I am driving the car, there is a person in the front passengers seat and he is in the back seat. The person in the front passengers seat raises a question about house security. I MIGHT say "He locked the door".>>

My reply:
You MIGHT be correct. Your "MIGHT" allows you to say anything.
Billy Wang   Sun Apr 01, 2007 12:57 am GMT
Oh hi engtense
Geoff_One   Sun Apr 01, 2007 1:54 am GMT
<< You must think I, as an ESL, started to learn English tense merely yesterday, so I would believe what you say. >>

You must think I, an ESL person, started to learn English tense only yesterday, so I would be inclined to believe what you say.

Achievements are relative. There are so many people from your part of the world who speak very good English - often their English is better than that of many native speakers. So for many native speakers of English, encountering people from your part of the world who speak very good English is no surprise. What I find intertesting is those people who also speak Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese or Japanese. I have met such people a number of times.

<< Present Perfect is difficult, ... >>

Difficulty is relative. And it is not even difficult in Spanish. What can you say about the present perfect in Spanish? In constructing the present perfect in Spanish does one use conjugations of the Spanish verb "tener" (to have) or does one use conjugations of another Spanish verb? If another Spanish verb is used, what is this verb and what is its translation into English?

"Tener" is somewhat like the English "tenacious".

If there are people who are claiming that English is difficult and they have studied English for many years, then they should start studying Spanish (the world's other grand international language). When they come back to English, they will see how easy English is.
Geoff_One   Sun Apr 01, 2007 2:13 am GMT
<< As for Aspect, as I have explained in "6.1 Aspect Theory hides more", some ... >>

Where is "6.1 Aspect Theory hides more" in this thread/website??

As for aspect, I explained in my book, "??????", at the section titled "6.1 Aspect Theory Hides More", some ...
Geoff_One   Sun Apr 01, 2007 2:20 am GMT
<< I guess you meant how I can do it with only one sentence and one tense. Do I guess correctly? >>

Did I guess correctly?

No.
Geoff_One   Sun Apr 01, 2007 2:41 am GMT
<< <<I am in the outside yard of a surburban home with two people, he and another person. The three of us are about to go out in a car. He has locked the door but has a habit of going back into the house to check things such as the gas stove. The other person raises a question about house security. I MIGHT say "He has locked the door".>>

<<I am in a car with two people, 50 kms from the door in question that is part of a house. I am driving the car, there is a person in the front passengers seat and he is in the back seat. The person in the front passengers seat raises a question about house security. I MIGHT say "He locked the door".>>

My reply:
You MIGHT be correct. Your "MIGHT" allows you to say anything. >>


What happen's when you apply Ockham's Razor? You apply it to the above and tell us what your result is?

Note: I might also say "The security of the house is OK", "The house is secure" etc etc That is why I didn't use "I would definately say .."
Geoff_One   Sun Apr 01, 2007 10:32 am GMT
What happen's >> What happens
Geoff_One   Sun Apr 01, 2007 11:01 am GMT
<<I am in the outside yard of a surburban home with two people, he and another person. The three of us are about to go out in a car. He has locked the door but has a habit of going back into the house to check things such as the gas stove. The other person raises a question about house security. I MIGHT say "He has locked the door".>>

" My reply:
You MIGHT be correct. Your "MIGHT" allows you to say anything. "

It is implicit as to what the boundary conditions on "MIGHT" are.

Explain this and explain how I could say that "He left the door unlocked".