By Tenses, Modal verbs

If we use passive voice, we don't have to change it in reported speech. Am I right? JTT: That's right. Sounds your books are telling merely that some native speakers don't do always the tense backshift in direct-to-indirect speech conversion. But I don't take it as that those books are saying...

CGEL: Conversion to indirect reported speech not a matter of grammatical rule There is a second respect in which we must beware of being misled by the traditonal account associating backshift with indirect reported speech. Converting into indirect reprted speech, however, is not a matter of...

JTT: Why do you think that sentence 1 "refers to T2 (present time) but sentence 2 "refers to T1 or some time between T1 and T2 (past time)"? Inanc: Simply because, 'could' is used as the past form of 'can' in most circumstances, although I know this is not true all the time....

JTT ... we regard modal verbs as unmarked for tense What you are (or the book is) saying is just about epistemic modals. Some root modals like 'will' (futurity) or 'can' (ability) have tense finiteness. So your saying cannot be generalized for all modals. I agree most epistemic modals are free...

Paco: By the way I have a feeling that English 'now' (in the linguistic sense, not in the physical sense) is not instantaneous, but it seems to occupy some span in the time that flows from the past to the future. Otherwise I cannot understand the usage of the present progressive tense. JTT: I...

Hello JTT Paco I was wondering if you could tell me the titles, the authors, and the publishers of the grammar books telling that we need not change the tense in the case the reported subordinate clause is in passive voice. Thank you in advance. JTT Be glad to Paco. Could you remind me to do so...

Paco: How about the case of "I would have saved 50 cents if I hadn't bought that popsicle yesterday"? Do you insist that ESLs should believe has a sense of future in this case too? Paco, take a step back, take a deep breath and look once more at your sentence. There is the addition of "have...

Hello JTT "I would save some dollars" contains a future meaning, NOT a past meaning. is NOT a past tense here. REMEMBER, modal verbs are tenseless. I'm wondering why you could be so assertive about that contains a future meaning. Suppose a boy utter a sentence like: "I would save 50 cents if I...

Pastel: Hi, JTT! JTT: Hi, Pastel. P: I don't get your meaning here. I would save some dollars if I hadn't bought Panasonic DC-FX7. I have to learn to make peace with it now. JTT: As I mentioned in an earlier post in this thread; "As I mentioned to Pieanne and you'll see more on this...

Hello JTT I was wondering if you could tell me the titles, the authors, and the publishers of the grammar books telling that we need not change the tense in the case the reported subordinate clause is in passive voice. Thank you in advance. paco