Talk:Uses of English verb forms
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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment[edit]
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 25 August 2020 and 12 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): RedClover4.
Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 04:37, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
Present ongoing[edit]
"Present tense forms are used, in principle, to refer to circumstances that exist at the present time (or over a period that includes the present time)."
I propose elaboration of the parenthetical phrase. I think that case needs more attention (and a name?).
- He likes apples.
- The earth orbits the sun.
- "Some things that happen for the first time seem to be happening again." (Lorenz Hart, "Where or When", from Rodgers and Hart, Babes in Arms.)
Vzeebjtf (talk) 14:35, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
-- See gnomic aspect. — kwami (talk) 00:16, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
The prefix "non"[edit]
The prefix "non" does not need or take a hyphen except when it precedes a proper noun or proper adjective. For example: nonfinite, nongeneral, noninteger, nonnegative, nonpositive, nonscientific, nonstandard, nontechnical, nonuniform, and nonverbal.
Examples of the hyphenated cases include non-British, non-Canadian, non-Catholic, non-English, non-European, non-Jewish, non-Oriental, non-Protestant, non-Roman, non-Slavic, non-Soviet, and non-Yankee.
Source: I was taught this by my mother, a crackerjack English teacher in a school in the United States, and other English teachers in the United States, and numerous dictionaries and mathematics textbooks.98.67.108.42 (talk) 17:36, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
Lack of contrast between past and past-participle verb forms[edit]
I don't know if this article is the best for this, but it came up in a discussion on the language ref desk. We all knew a lot of people who do this. The question was which verbs, like seen and done, use the PP form for simple past. Been (for 'was, were') is in there as well, but I don't know how general that is. And we didn't know if there were other verbs like these three. — kwami (talk) 00:16, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
"expressing a confident assumption about the present"[edit]
Despite the assertion about the Future perfect progressive "expressing a confident assumption about the present", the wikipedia entry for the Future perfect states that one about the past is also possible, "However it is also possible for it to be accompanied by a marker of the retrospective time of occurrence, as in I will have done it on the previous Tuesday, so this second example should also be added. --Backinstadiums (talk) 11:35, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
Past perfect progressive[edit]
The assertion that "The past perfect progressive or past perfect continuous (also known as the pluperfect progressive or pluperfect continuous) [...] is formed by combining had (the past tense of auxiliary have), been (the past participle of be), and the present participle of the main verb" is problematic for two reasons -
- The notion of main verb is duplicitous (as an ipse dixit) at worst and naive (as a relic of outmoded linguistic theory) at best.
- Limiting the prescribed structure to "been" ignores the contribution of anomalous stative verbs that can be used as participles in a past perfect progressive context, e.g.:
- The deceased senator had stood lying in state for two hours in the capital rotunda before the president arrived to pay his last respects.
- No one had remained waiting for a bailout in the weeks before the company's collapse.
Sure, you can parse those sentences by claiming that "lying" and "waiting" are adverbial rather than aspectual a la "She ran screaming that she'd been mugged," but such an interpretation fails to deny how the past perfect progressive CAN be marked by a stative past participle other than been. The context implies how to construe a sentence like, "She had stood waiting for an hour before her friend arrived." Whether she (A) intransively engaged in bearing her weight in an upright position for 60 minutes, or (B) statively was or remained expectantly idling for 60 minutes regardless of her standing, seating, or kneeling (etc.) posture is a matter of interpretation, not grammatical prescription. --Kent Dominic·(talk) 11:08, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for speedy deletion[edit]
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You can see the reason for deletion at the file description page linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 20:53, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
"Future-in-the-past" listed at Redirects for discussion[edit]
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Future-in-the-past. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 March 19#Future-in-the-past until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 20:18, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
Chart[edit]
I started with the grammatical sentences and then regularized them to show the underlying pattern.
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Just granpa (talk) 20:14, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
- Can you elaborate a bit? This is the closest Backinstadiums (talk) 23:34, 20 May 2022 (UTC)
I will have done it on the previous Tuesday[edit]
compare Will have done it yesterday --Backinstadiums (talk) 23:33, 20 May 2022 (UTC)