141–150 of 258 posts
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French learner here: I read that as "Julie would have slept with Pierre yesterday." I take it there's some mood subtlety I'm missing?
Context. Or even the lack thereof. In this case the use of the conditional implies an unstated condition, the "if I'm right about it" condition. This is more idiomatic than grammatical. It's the same in Spanish. In English we don't have this sort of idiom, so that phrase doesn't translate very well.
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Ok, how is that different than "learned"/"reported" being the aspect and "past" being the tense in Turkish?
Because "learned" and "reported" aren't aspects? Aspect describes the temporal structure of an event - for example, it might occur at a single moment, or it might occur at several discrete points in time ("I walk his dog every Saturday"), or it might occur over a continuous duration. Mood describes the relationship of an event to reality.
Why is "present perfect tense" closer to a tense, but "learned past tense" is closer to a mood?
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And in French... Tu parles français Tu parles français ? Parles-tu français ? Est-ce-que tu parles français ? I guess it's the best of both worlds. The French like to hear foreigners speak French though, they're just terrible at understanding accents they don't hear often and terrible at adjusting their speech so the other person understands them. And too self conscious about their English accent to speak English.
You would tutoyer a stranger?
This is not a tense but a grammatical mood, it's called the inferential mood. A bunch of languages have it to distinguish eyewitness accounts from reported speech. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferential_mood Verb tense has to do with an action's relationship to time, mood expresses the speaker's relationship and attitude to the action. English is pretty low on moods (indicative, imperative, subjunctive), while oth…
In "good moods", is more often used as "I'm on game, winning" or "I'm on fire" Others are about good mood in different tenses etc.
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What qualifies as a tense or not depends on your definitions of the term. Different linguists and traditions will have different standards and what is taught in school is often not the terminology used in scientific description - it's actually very common for school teachers to teach things that any linguist would think was downright wrong. But terminology is a choice, not something where it really makes sense to say…
It's very funny as a Spaniard since "verbal tense" in Spanish is literally "verbal time" (tiempo(s) verbal), so it's unequivocally not able to describe things that are not temporal: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiempo_verbal Even more interestingly, that article links in English to the TAM (Tense-Aspect-Mood): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tense%E2%80%93aspect%E2%80%93m...
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Because "learned" and "reported" aren't aspects? Aspect describes the temporal structure of an event - for example, it might occur at a single moment, or it might occur at several discrete points in time ("I walk his dog every Saturday"), or it might occur over a continuous duration. Mood describes the relationship of an event to reality.
Ok, let me correct my question: Why is "present perfect tense" closer to a tense, but "learned past tense" is closer to a mood?
In modern grammar, "present perfect" is not "close to a tense" - it's a combination of present tense and perfect aspect.
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You're correct that it conveys some temporal information. You're incorrect that that makes it a tense. The imperative mood in English ("Go do this!") can be said to convey a future act. After all, you can't order someone to have done something in the past, or to be doing something right now. But that doesn't mean we refer to it as the "imperative tense". If you look up the definition of grammatical mood on Wikipedia,…
I didn't say it doesn't act as a mood. I'm saying that it acts as a tense, and therefore I can name it as such, as how grammar forefathers named "present perfect tense" in English despite all the objections from HN about "perfect" being an aspect. :)
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The inferential mood (your "gossip tense") is more related to mood (signals a particular relationship to truth or reality) than tense (signifies a relationship to time).
Why isn't it the case with the use of the term "present perfect tense" in English then, despite "perfect" being an aspect, not even a tense? How is present perfect closer to a tense, but this one closer to a mood? What's the difference?
But as per my other comment, if you're just listing all the constructions an English word can take for your students to memorise, you can just call them all tenses and be done with it.
This is not a tense but a grammatical mood, it's called the inferential mood. A bunch of languages have it to distinguish eyewitness accounts from reported speech. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferential_mood Verb tense has to do with an action's relationship to time, mood expresses the speaker's relationship and attitude to the action. English is pretty low on moods (indicative, imperative, subjunctive), while oth…
Usually used when the speaker got drunk and has no memory of the thing they did. a.k.a. "past forgotten" tense. The double inferential also reflects the fact that the witness account maybe inaccurate/exaggerated either because the witness(es) were themselves drunk or because they knew the speaker cannot dispute their account.
The most extreme form is when the speaker doesn't even remember getting drunk ("Бил съм се бил напил.) and/or getting in a fight ("Бил съм се бил бил.").
The extra pun comes from "fought" and "was" being spelled and pronounced the same.
It also rhymes.
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You're correct that it conveys some temporal information. You're incorrect that that makes it a tense. The imperative mood in English ("Go do this!") can be said to convey a future act. After all, you can't order someone to have done something in the past, or to be doing something right now. But that doesn't mean we refer to it as the "imperative tense". If you look up the definition of grammatical mood on Wikipedia,…
"Keep at it!", "Hold the line!" appear to be orders to be doing something right now.