6.2. ASPECT COGNITIVE VARIABLE AND TIME FRAME

Good grammar can work round the clock and globe. Let us imagine someone from the USA in Paris (■→GEORGE GERSHWIN did). Our American could be a young woman, the Jill Smith that Jim wanted to meet in ■→CHAPTER 6. Let us not forget about our work with vocabulary.

Jill is a reedy yet energetic figure, her rebellious and dark, almost black hair flying in the mid-September Paris wind. Jill is a very resolute person, one to walk big steps and to breathe deep.
Jill is entering a French restaurant, a place deliberately prudent in its fine interior. She is looking for her friend, Madame Règle. Ms. Règle often has her lunch there.

Monsieur Sauf is not the stereotype, for a man to make his living off gratification to taste buds. But the large apron knotted on his left hip in a kind of ― Jill, though learned, would never be sure ― stevedore or half hitch, you could think that he is some athlete, here about a plate of Moules Marinière himself. He is the restaurateur.
This is not the first time Jill meets Monsieur Sauf, yet she still does feel minute in his presence. She asks Monsieur Sauf about Madame Règle. Reliant on his knowledge, Monsieur Sauf could say,

7. I haven’t seen her today.
Variable {TO};
Our cognitive frame is open.

He also could say,
7a. I didn’t see her today.
Variable: {ON};
Our cognitive frame is closed.

Madame Règle is not a systematic person at all. The only regularity about her would be a small book she always carries fastened to her bag with a scarf, or actually a variety of scarves, of many colors and patterns.
The book is not the same book every day, and the choice of the scarf sure depends on some totally unpredictable factor, just as the exact time for lunch, for which you might want to assume the broad time frame of about sixty minutes to commence or not to happen altogether.

Madame Règle comes to lunch between 1:00 p.m. and 2:00 p.m., or she does not show up at all. Let us check on the time. It is 1:30.

Monsieur Sauf may use expression 7. The expression has an open time frame. Madame Règle still may emerge in the door:
I haven’t seen her today.

Let us now think the time is 2:30. Monsieur Sauf may use expression 7a. The expression has a closed and PAST time frame. He knows that Madame Règle is not coming today. The knowledge is part the context:
I didn’t see her today.

What if Jill asks whether Madame Règle was there, let us say, half an hour before? Monsieur Sauf may follow his linguistic gravitation:
7b. I didn’t see her.
(ON the cognitive ground: She was not here at the time in the PAST you are asking about.)

Spring Flowing Colors

Jill is a grindstone to turn, about good food. There is no telling her that good food could be bad, and she esteems the French cuisine.
She usually visits Monsieur Sauf’s restaurant when she is in Paris. If she meets Madame Règle, she will sure join her for a meal by a table looking to the Quai de Seine (!)

There is an anecdote associated with Benjamin Franklin. A man asked a smith to make his ax especially sharp. The man ended up turning the stone himself.

We can find plenty of facts and trivia about America at ■→ARCHIVE.ORG, a free internet resource. ■→DETAILS/@TERESAPELKA have USA civics, and a PDF manuscript of Benjamin Franklin’s memoir.
Feel welcome: if we think about our language progress every day, we may improve faster and shape stronger skill. We can make notes like Benjamin Franklin did; we may also stay by thinking alone. In French, the word règle can mean a rule of grammar, and the word sauf can indicate an exception.

Let us practice our more and more ■→METICULOUS natures in exercises.
■→6.3. EXERCISES: THE ASPECT AND THE TIME FRAME

■→This text is also available in Polish.
My ■→PUBLIC DOMAIN TRANSLATION has ■→BENJAMIN FRANKLIN’S MEMOIR translated to Polish.

In the first part of the language journey, feel welcome to consider a picture for
■ the grammatical Past, Present, and Future;
■ the Simple, Progressive, and Perfect;
■ infinitive, auxiliary, and head verb forms;
■ the Affirmative, Interrogative, Negative, and Negative Interrogative;
■ irregular verbs and vowel patterns: high and low, back and front.
Third edition, 2022.
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The world may never have seen her original handwriting, if her skill was taken for supernatural. Feel welcome to Poems by Emily Dickinson prepared for print by Teresa Pelka: thematic stanzas, notes on the Greek and Latin inspiration, the correlative with Webster 1828, and the Aristotelian motif, Things perpetual — these are not in time, but in eternity.
■→Free access, Internet Archive
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