A concept of time
Engtense, You have certainly shown that the English tenses can be very tricky if you are not a native speaker. I think in general that native English speakers use the tenses almost automatically.
I have an interesting example about tenses from Spanish.
In Spanish you can use the present tense to jump into
the future. In Spanish you can say:
I see you tomorrow.
However, in English you would say:
I will see you tomorrow.
Even native Spanish speakers who can speak good English
and have a reasonable understanding of the English tenses,
from time to time say things like:
I see you tomorrow. (Correct Spanish & Incorrect English)
This happens because the native Spanish speakers are more
use to their speach patterns than the English speach patterns.
Note that there is a number of ways of talking about the future in
Spanish.
>> This happens because the native Spanish speakers are more
use to their speach patterns than the English speach patterns.
Note that there is a number of ways of talking about the future in
Spanish.<<
I am impressed you know so many kinds of languages. But I want to learn from you the concept of the future time. How do you define the future?
From your post I think you take Tomorrow as a future time. So, the next 24 hours can be a future time, I guess.
What about the next eight hours? Is it a future or not?
What about the next five minutes? Is it a future or not?
What about the next five seconds? Is it a future or not?
Or how do you know whether a time is a future or not?
As you see, I explain English tense only by concepts of time, so the concept of the future is important to me.
«I see you tomorrow.
However, in English you would say:
I will see you tomorrow.»
"I am leaving tomorrow" is a correct English sentence.
Have a look at the thread "How to define the future and the past?" located at
http://www.antimoon.com/forum/t144.htm.
You both agree with Agree, don't you?
BTW: the link is broken. It should refer to t144-0.htm.
I was referring to the link Ant_222 had pointed out. Who did possibly ask about such question, defining the concepts of time? If you visit the link, you may see the question was asked by a reader called Agree. I was the reader Agree. It was a pen name. I, Agree.
>>BTW: the link is broken. It should refer to t144-0.htm. <<
The link is a fullstop more. You have added fullstop to the link and thus broken it. The link should read like this:
http://www.antimoon.com/forum/t144.htm
Yes, as I said in the old link, the present and the future are overlapped. Therefore, two concepts of time, past and present, are enough for me to explain all kinds of tenses.
What about written work to do with time travel? In saying
this I know we are travelling into the future at a speed
of approximately one second per second.
Search the internet for "There was a young lady named Bright".
Time travel to the universal? Grammarians have long expected the situation, I guess. They claim the Simple Present is used to say "Universal Time":
http://elti.co.id/cgi-bin/files/view.cgi?category=2&id=1017513321
To a foreign young student, what is this? Actually, it means English native speakers don't care about the explanation anymore. "If you want to know Simple Present, know the Universal Time first" -- this is the idea. Do you know how many words the grammar book gives to explain Universal Time? Zero.
I will certainly visit other forums soon and introduce my book. Only can my book face and pass any kind of discussions. Why? It comes from discussions, so it is the only book that can pass any discussions.
No meaning can explain a tense -- this is what I am saying. Please allow me to explain why.
On the earth, nothing escapes from time. Everything has time -- this is why English can add a tense to every sentence. As the time flows, everything has to experience any kind of time. To put it simply, as the time goes, different tenses are used to say different parts of time of things, which include any meanings, of course. But if different tenses can say a meaning, then a meaning cannot be used to link to any special tense, unless you specifically add that the meaning is also linked to any other tense. For example, you cannot link Habit to a tense, without specifically adding that Habit is also linked to all other tenses. This is why any meaning cannot explain a tense. You can, but you have to hide away the truth that the meaning can explain any other tenses. But why do we hide away things and tell only a partial truth to readers? And how possibly can this kind of concealment go through a discussion at all?
«In saying this I know we are travelling into the future at a speed of approximately one second per second.»
I'd say it is X sec/sec*.
In the numerator stands the second of our world. But the denominator contains the second of the time flowing beyond our world. So, this is the speed at which the past/future border ('now') moves forward. It can be measured only by God, because we, being inside our world, can't look at it from outside. And if this speed changes, we won't notice anything: nothing will change for us, because all physical processes are bound to the in-world time flow.
If to compare our world with a book, 'now' is the place where the reader is currently reading. The past is everything he has read and the future is what is still unread. The in-world time doesn't depend on the rate at which the book is read. Or we may replace reading by writing.
Otherwise 1 sec/sec is a tautology: one second later it will be one second later than now.
This is way off topic but: Something like this happened. In a test, there were two atomic clocks that were synchronized. One was kept stationary relative to the Earth and the other was placed in a jet aircraft which undertook a flight. After the flight the readings on the two atomic clocks were simultaneously checked and a very slight difference was found which was in accordance with relevant Einsteinian equation.
Also: A person who travels to the second nearest star and back in an antimatter starship would for a significant part of the journey have his/her movement into the future slowed down. Say at one point his/her movement into the future may be 0.2 of a second per second.
0.2 of a second later on the antimatter starship, it will be 1 second later on the Earth and approximately 1 second later on the moon.