Search results for 'tag:Constructions tag:Present tenses' matching tags 'Constructions' and 'Present tenses'

Re: tense problems

Mr Wordy — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 17:33:35 GMT

If I were to tell you what I think (thought?) of you, I'd be sacked from my job

Cool Breeze
In the first sentence the use of a present tense (think) emphasises what your opinion is now. The past tense (thought) refers to the past; your opinion may have changed by now.

Hmmm.

To me, in this type of construction, "thought" does not have to refer to the past. It can do, but, for me it can (and very often does) mean that you think it right now.

Addition: If I wanted to indicate what I had thought in the past, I would say "If I were to tell you what I used to think about you..."

Re: conditional

CalifJim — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 02:59:55 GMT

Anonymous
Would you please let me know as soon as possible if you would like to attend this seminar.

Correct.

Anonymous
If you would hand me that spoon, I will/would appreciate it.

would OK, not will.

Anonymous
If you would give me a pen,I would give you a pencil.

Just barely OK. More idiomatic with will, thus: If you'll give me a pen, I'll give you a pencil.

Anonymous
He looks as if he is about to cry. - first conditional?
He looked as if he were going to cry.- second conditional?

I'm not aware of any classification of the as if constructions into first, second, and third. From what I've seen, they can parallel the first, second, and third conditionals in their tense patterns, but usage is much more free. That is, they don't always conform strictly to those numbered conditional patterns. Like so many other cases, the "past" form can be borrowed into a present tense setting, thus: He looks as if he were about to cry.

Re: whenever and when

Mr Wordy — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 17:34:21 GMT

You changed the tense. Did you mean to?

If you meant "When you are ready, I am waiting for your answer." then, yes, it's very similar in meaning to "Whenever you are ready, I'm waiting for your answer.", and the two are often interchangeable. "Whenever" has slightly more of a sense of "any time at all". To me, though, this sentence isn't punctuated correctly. As written, to me it means "At the future time at which you are ready, I am waiting for your answer", which has mixed-up tenses. It only makes sense if "When you are ready" is used in the conversational sense of "You go ahead and do it when you're ready". One punctuation possibility is therefore "When you're ready! I'm waiting for your answer."

"When you are ready, I will be waiting for your answer." can be interpreted in two ways. The first is "When you're ready! I'll be waiting for your answer..." which is slightly unusual (the present tense, "I'm waiting", is more natural). The second is "At the future time at which you are ready, I will be waiting for your answer", which sounds not unreasonable, but is IMO also a slightly unusual thing to say. Something like "When you arrive, I'll be waiting for you." is, in my view, a better sentence with which to illustrate this construction.

Re: Let's see who finishes/will finish first.

CalifJim — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 19:03:49 GMT

Only one s in present!!!

You can't use will with the stative verbs in this construction: [Let's see / Let me know / Tell me] plus an indirect question. I would not call these relative clauses.

to finish first - an action.

how you are - a state - not an action.

get there first - same as arrive first - an action.

you think - an internal activity; having an opinion - not an action.

_______

Thus, with the indirect question in brackets { }, ungrammatical choices prefixed with asterisk *:

[Let's see / Let me know / Tell me] {who [finishes / will finish / gets there / will get there] first}.

[Let's see / Let me know / Tell me] {how [you are / *you will be / what you think / *what you will think]}

_______

Your example with make sure does not belong to the pattern above. There's no indirect question.

Make sure (that) you come back soon.

A make sure that pattern is not followed by a future (will).

______

You can save yourself a lot of headaches by using the present tense for all of these. Even in cases where will is possible, it's almost always the inferior choice.

Re: Grammar Suggestion

Mr Wordy — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 13:07:57 GMT

Sitting at my writing desk beside the open window, and working on my English assignment, I was stunned/amazed by the soft evening glow, gently landing on my blank sheet and covering the white space with their yellow and orange shades, seemed like gold.

A few comments:

1. "Stunned" implies that you were shocked, which doesn't seem to fit this gentle and reflective scene. "Amazed" doesn't seem quite right either. You would be "amazed" by something very unusual or unexpected, but a soft evening glow is neither. I would suggest "fascinated" or "captivated".

2. Saying that the "glow" is "gently landing" does not sound quite right to me.

3. "the soft evening glow ... with their" has a mismatch of singular/plural.

4. The last part of the sentence, "seemed like gold", is grammatically faulty because the verb "seemed" does not have a subject (in other words, the sentence construction doesn't indicate what thing it is that "seemed"). You might want to study a simpler sentence such as "I was captivated by the sunset, seemed like gold", which is wrong for the same reason.

The tenses in your sentence are fine. You can write a sentence like this in either the past tense or the present tense. Here, you could alternatively write "Sitting at my writing desk ... working ... I am captivated ...". Using the present tense makes the events seem more immediate, as if you are writing while they're actually happening. To me, the present tense is harder to sustain in long passages of first-person narrative text. I find it can become rather tiresome after a while -- but that's just my personal opinion.

Re: 2 questions

Marius Hancu — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 20:14:30 GMT

>I have not seen such constructions in the present tense.

Your loss:-)

660 on "no sooner do we * than"

http://books.google.com/books?q=%22no+sooner+do+we+*+than%22+&btnG=Search+Books

Re: 2 questions

Yoong Liat — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 03:57:54 GMT

This type of construction expresses a surprise.

Hardly/Scarcely had we sat down at the table when the phone rang.

No sooner had we sat down at the table than the phone rang.

I have not seen such constructions in the present tense.

Re: A question about Style

Ant_222 — Tue, 13 May 2008 06:36:38 GMT

Hello, mr. Micawber

Looks like I have to provide some further explanations.
In a traditional text adventure the player enters text commands which are parsed/interpreted by the game's engine, and gets the result in the form a textual description. In the example above the commands were marked with ">" (a common symbol to denote command line prompt), and followed by possible responses from the game. The language parsers in early games were quite primitive, so the player interacted with the computer via simple constructions like command+object, and articles were usually ignored. Even modern games of this genre inherit the syntax of the elder games, although with some improvements.

If I haven't explained it well, all I can do is refer you to Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_adventure

And an example, of course: The End Means Escape (http://www.wurb.com/if/game/1016)
(plus you'll need the TADS inerpreter to open the game file: http://www.tads.org/t3dl/pksetup.exe â just in case you really want to try)

EDIT: Maybe I didn't formulate my question clear enough: Will the present tense in item descriptions (i.e. after EXAMINE) peacefully coexist with the Past Tense used to desribe the hero's actions (for commands GO, TAKE, USE, REST, ATTACK, TALK and so on...) in a diary-like form.

Re: correct sentences 24/11

Teo — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 06:09:54 GMT

They won't smoke ever since they saw a film on lung cancer.

What does "won't" mean here?

Re: correct sentences 24/11

Teo — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 06:09:49 GMT

http://forums.eslcafe.com/student/viewtopic.php?t=22113&highlight=