Grammar Discussions

[get me outta here]

I think sometimes a few extra words seem to give it more emphasis, even if they are superfluous words. Unless, perhaps in context the 2nd and 3rd phrase is an argument against the other person having saying, "No, I don't remember a conversation". Then there's the past whatnots too.

Just make sure I'm not going mad... there is a difference between all of the following three sentences, right?

• I spoke to you about February's rent.
• I had spoken to you about February's rent.
• I have spoken to you about February's rent.

I've learned things about grammatical and linguistic structures and semantics through learning French for a few months that I never did in 12 years of Australian schooling. Unbelievable.

 

[JohnM]

Just make sure I'm not going mad... there is a difference between all of the following three sentences, right?

• I spoke to you about February's rent.
• I had spoken to you about February's rent.
• I have spoken to you about February's rent.

I've learned things about grammatical and linguistic structures and semantics through learning French for a few months that I never did in 12 years of Australian schooling. Unbelievable.

There are differences, so you are not going mad.

 

[Deleted member 29185]

There are differences, so you are not going mad.

Perhaps even, there are differences however that may not confirm that he's not going mad.

 

[sergeyvzn]

The first phrase - the Past Indefinite tense. An action in the past
The second one - the Past Perfect tense. An action that happened in the past prior to a later action. Normally it is used in something like "I had spoken to you about February's rent before I evicted you for non-paying"
The third one - the Present Perfect tense. An action that has been completed by the moment of speech

 

[JessicaTam]

Thank you.

 

[anat0l]

The first phrase - the Past Indefinite tense. An action in the past
The second one - the Past Perfect tense. An action that happened in the past prior to a later action. Normally it is used in something like "I had spoken to you about February's rent before I evicted you for non-paying"
The third one - the Present Perfect tense. An action that has been completed by the moment of speech

See, this is the thing. In 12 years of Australian education, we only talked about tenses - past, present and future. Mood etc. was, in my experience, never taught. Formulating sentences correctly - e.g. to say "I had spoken to you about February's rent before I evicted you" instead of "I have spoken to you about February's rent before I evicted you" - was purely through trial and error (i.e. if you made the mistake, you were corrected) rather than through instruction and reference. You could probably make the error at times and still get away with it.

In French (as well as other languages), often these differences result in more than subtle changes to the words, viz. conjugation of verb.

 

[sergeyvzn]

It does not surprise me. English is my second language that's why I know lots more about its grammar than an average Australian who studied English at school as the approach here is to treat it as a "text" rather than break it up into grammatical bits and put them together later. If it were like it you'd know there are 4 main tense groups in the English language or "families" - Indefinite, Perfect, Continuous and Perfect Continuous. Each group has (with minor exceptions) it's own Past, Present and Future...

There are other things like Sequence of Tenses that sometimes gives birth to really interesting things like Future-in-the-Past but I'd better stop here -

 

[Gibbels]

There are other things like Sequence of Tenses that sometimes gives birth to really interesting things like Future-in-the-Past but I'd better stop here -

As I also learned German you wouldn't believe what totally hard-to-get tenses there are. There is the future-in-the-past and the optional-future-in-past-in-the-future and so on.

 

[sergeyvzn]

As I also learned German you wouldn't believe what totally hard-to-get tenses there are. There is the future-in-the-past and the optional-future-in-past-in-the-future and so on.

Which makes perfect sense. English and German belong to the same family of languages (as opposed to, for example French) and the English verbal tense structure grew out of the German one but under an extremely powerful influence from those pesky Knights from Normandie who brought their French vocabulary and analytical tense structure. It changed the original German-based synthetic old English verbal tense structure forever ...making it a very logical, flexible and versatile

 

[JessicaTam]

It does not surprise me. English is my second language that's why I know lots more about its grammar than an average Australian who studied English at school as the approach here is to treat it as a "text" rather than break it up into grammatical bits and put them together later. If it were like it you'd know there are 4 main tense groups in the English language or "families" - Indefinite, Perfect, Continuous and Perfect Continuous. Each group has (with minor exceptions) it's own Past, Present and Future...

There are other things like Sequence of Tenses that sometimes gives birth to really interesting things like Future-in-the-Past but I'd better stop here -

And using the present continuous to indicate the future.

It was only when I was learning French and German that I really understood English.

 

[sergeyvzn]

And using the present continuous to indicate the future.

It was only when I was learning French and German that I really understood English.

That is fairly common in other languages:

French - je vais dîner avec mes amis

Spanish - voy a cenar con mis amigos

English - I'm going to have dinner with my friends

Basically, to go in the "immediate future" (in English this is the Present Continuous indeed) plus the infinitive of the main (meaning-bearing) verb

 

[sergeyvzn]

And yes, learning other languages does help a lot. Goethe once said : "Whoever is not acquainted with foreign languages knows nothing of his own."

He was right

 

[ketsuzei]

It was only when I was learning French and German that I really understood English.

I was lucky enough to grow up in Australia as a non-native English speaker with a name that sounds ridiculously like I should be a native speaker (and have ended up subjecting my kids to a similar fate). So a lot of early linguistic mishaps were interpreted in an unfavourable light by teachers ("slow") and fellow students ("retard") alike.

I also found that a lot of things in English started to make sense after I started doing French in Year 7.

These days my English is still clumsy in certain situations, but I can at least reassure my kids that "native" English isn't always what it's cracked up to be.

 

[anat0l]

That is fairly common in other languages:

French - je vais dîner avec mes amis

...

English - I'm going to have dinner with my friends

Basically, to go in the "immediate future" (in English this is the Present Continuous indeed) plus the infinitive of the main (meaning-bearing) verb

Indeed - in French this construction is called futur proche, or Near Future. It is the present tense of the verb "go" plus the infinitive of the main verb.

In French it is not regarded as a separate tense as such, but rather regarded as a special grammatical construction. This is in contrast to, e.g. the "composed past" or passé composé, which is also a compound construction but is an essential tense (indeed, it is the most common way to express an event in the past in the indicative mood).

As it may be the case in other languages, tenses in French may actually map to more than one equivalent English interpretation.


Funny enough, in connection, I never understood what the infinitive was until I started learning French. It was only then that I also understood the old advice, "Never split the infinitive"... which is ironic now as it is often broken anyway, but not deliberately as it is clear that doing it all the time would largely be awkward.

 

[sergeyvzn]

Indeed - in French this construction is called futur proche, or Near Future. It is the present tense of the verb "go" plus the infinitive of the main verb.

In French it is not regarded as a separate tense as such, but rather regarded as a special grammatical construction. This is in contrast to, e.g. the "composed past" or passé composé, which is also a compound construction but is an essential tense (indeed, it is the most common way to express an event in the past in the indicative mood).

As it may be the case in other languages, tenses in French may actually map to more than one equivalent English interpretation.

Of course they do but French is closer in this particular case to English than many other languages, for example "le futur immediat" is almost 100 per cent equivalent to the construction "to go + Present Participle" in English (nous allons partir tout de suite = we are going to leave right now), "le futur simple" has its equivalent in the English Future Indefinite (je travaillerai demain matin = I will work tomorrow morning"....etc...etc

It also has to do with the history of English and a very strong Romance influence brought about by that invasion in the 11th century

Much more difficult to map tenses in other, more distant languages. For example, in Finnish there is no future tense. A verb in the present will denote a future action based on the context, or with the help of certain grammatical constructs

Or - in Russian, for example, there is no equivalent of the Present Perfect tense so commonly used in English (I have spoken to him about February's rent). This will be translated into Russian (which is my first language, by the way) using the verb "to speak" in one of the two Russian past tenses, the choice of either depending on the context. That's why learning Present Perfect for a Russian native speaker is a nightmare, it just does not work at all, it took me many years to get it even after studying the English grammar professionally for 2 years

 

[Julesmac]

The first phrase - the Past Indefinite tense. An action in the past
The second one - the Past Perfect tense. An action that happened in the past prior to a later action. Normally it is used in something like "I had spoken to you about February's rent before I evicted you for non-paying"
The third one - the Present Perfect tense. An action that has been completed by the moment of speech

...and all that's why my Italian studies as a 50+ yo did not progress past the third semester. Thought to myself -I can't remember what an indefinite tense is in English, let alone Italian....however I was able to make myself understood for four weeks in Italy with the aid of much arm waving and laughter!

 

[get me outta here]

I think I should leave this thread to people who know a lot more about grammar than I do.

 

[JessicaTam]

I think I should leave this thread to people who know a lot more about grammar than I do.

Everyone is welcome. It is not always so technical.

 

[sergeyvzn]

And I'd better shut up or it would look like I have hijacked the thread -

 

[JessicaTam]

And I'd better shut up or it would look like I have hijacked the thread -

I am enjoying the discussion.

And no-one has mentioned Latin!