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

review

somer — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 19:49:02 GMT

3a) A cat ate the small animal.

3b) A cat is a small animal.

The syntactic analyses of the two sentences are differents. In the sentence 3a) we have (s, v, do) while, in the second sentence 3b) we have (s, v (copular), sP).

In 3a) âa cat âis noun phrase (a is determiner indefinite article, cat is head noun of noun phrase âa catâ), âateâ is verb in past simple tense,â the small animal â is noun phrase consist of determiner âtheâ, âsmallâ is adjective , âanimalâ is the head noun of the noun phrase, all the noun phrase functions as direct object.

In 3b) âa catâ is noun phrase (a is determiner indefinite article, cat is head noun of noun phrase âa catâ) function as subject, âisâ copular verb in simple present tense,â a small animalâ noun phrase consist of the indefinite determiner âaâ , the adjective small , and the head noun of the noun phrase âanimalâ, the noun phrase function as subject predicative.

Differences in the meaning: the first sentence means that there was a cat and it ate the small animal "the small animal" should be mentioned before, or known to the reader, while the second sentence means that a cat is a kind of animal and it is small. We are talking generally here.

Re: why present tense?

RayH — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 13:51:37 GMT

Enchanted
Thanks, CJ and all.
I also saw many articles in Wikipedia that are talking about the synopsis of movies. They use present tense as well. Are they the same reason? Breathless immediacy?
Ench

The way this was explained to me, many years ago, is that a movie (or book) is always in the present tense. If you watch the movie it's happening now, it you read the book it's happening now. Therefore the use of present tense in reviews.

Re: why present tense?

Enchanted — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 13:32:11 GMT

Thanks, CJ and all.
I also saw many articles in Wikipedia that are talking about the synopsis of movies. They use present tense as well. Are they the same reason? Breathless immediacy?
Ench

reported speech?

Anonymous — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 05:25:48 GMT

Hi,

I don't understand why it has to be in present tense for the subordinate clause in the reported speech content. I saw this from YAHOO NEWS today. The title of the article is "US re-examines Afghan civilian deaths from attack," and it is by JASON STRAZIUSO, Associated Press Writer.

KABUL, Afghanistan - The U.S. military said Sunday it has new evidence about civilian casualties from an American attack that Afghanistan says killed scores of women and children and it is sending a senior officer to the country to review its initial finding that no more than seven civilians died.

Why the subordinate clause that starts with "that Afghanistan says" is in present tense? Having new evidence is a currently still-binding? truth and understand it can be in present tense but what follows it in a subordinate clause form in present tense??

Looking for some tips and/or curriculum suggestions

mikesusangray — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 21:50:11 GMT

Hi all!

I've been giving English conversation lessons to a theology professor for about a year now. He's getting on in the years - a couple years from retirement - and his primary goal has been just to get his spoken English going a little stronger. His mother tongue is French but he's been teaching at a German language university for many years.

I'd like to add some more specific inputs to our lessons but I can't seem to find the right material. His passive skills are excellent - he reads widely and with perfect comprehension in his field - and he can communicate quite understandably. He is a linguistics specialist and can grasp any concept about the language immediately. I brought along Cambridge Advanced Grammar in Use and he could plow through a chapter in five minutes with perfect conceptual comprehension.

However, he also continues to make very simple errors - for example, he has trouble choosing between present simple and continuous or often uses the present tense for past events. Sentence order tends to get wander hither and yon while definite and indefinite articles come and go with the tide. (Prepositions are a problem too, but I won't beat him to hard there - prepositions are difficult in any new language.) In many cases his mistakes are typical of French or German speech patterns.

One other limitation is that he enjoys the weekly lessons (a good hour), but doesn't have much time to study in between.

Right now we spend about 15 minutes reading a chapter from Advanced Grammar in Use and about 45 minutes talking about just about anything under the sun, while I take notes and show him problems under the categories Pronunciation/Articles & Prespositions/Word Order/Other Grammar/Vocabulary/Idioms. However, I don't think the work book is a good choice - particularly since he doesn't do the homework - and it seems like he isn't making very good progress with his typical problem patterns - though he greets them like old friends when I point them out.

Any tips here?

Suppose there is complete darkness and there are...

Jackson6612 — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 20:32:16 GMT

Suppose there is complete darkness and there are no dust or water particles in the air. A laser beam passing in front of a man would not be visible to him because there is nothing in the air to reflect light to his eyes.

When the sun has completely set, there will still be some light. Please have a look on the attached picture. The blue triangle represents the area which still has some light, therefore a person standing in that area can still see the birds in the sky. But theoretically there should be no light in the blue area because light rays aren't reaching there. I believe there is some light because of dust particles and water molecules in the air. Perhaps diffraction of light rays through the air also play some role.

Questions:
Please edit the above text.

In the first paragraph I have used present tense in the sense where it is used to tell a story. Would it be called fake present tense?

In the second paragraph I have used the combination of present and future tenses. I am asking the reader to imagine a situation. Is the used combination of tenses correct one?

I find/found it difficult to park a/the car along a/the kerb.

Peaceblinkfriend — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 13:22:17 GMT

I find it difficult to park a/the car along a/the kerb.

I found it difficult to park a/the car along a/the kerb.

Suppose I found this to be the case some time ago and I still find this to hold true, what should I say? Should I use the present tense or the past tense?

Also, could you please tell me what articles I should use here?

Thank you in advance.

PBF

Re: decline.

Huevos — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 16:43:34 GMT

New2grammar
stores and restaurants are seeing sharp decline in sales ...

Just to clarify about the indefinite article: it's OK to say "stores and restaurants see sharp decline in sales" without the article when using the present tense; in fact it has the ring of a newspaper headline. On the other hand when using the gerund not using the article in this context sounds very wrong to me as a native speaker.

Re: articles

Clive — Tue, 27 May 2008 03:06:27 GMT

Hi,

It depends on the context, but I think that in most cases you'd use #1.

Your grammar is also a little awkward. The definite article suggests that you are talking about a specific policeman. The present tense suggests that you are describing his habits/routine. That all seems like something you would seldom want to talk about.

Best wishes, Clive

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.