Grammar books vary vastly in guidance on Modal verbs and the Conditional or Unreal Past. We can exercise our grammar relativity, to manage.
10.4. MORE WORKOUT FOR REAL-TIME TALK
Tag: The Past
Grammatical Past reference.
10.3. WORKOUT FOR REAL-TIME TALK
We can use Form Relativity with the Progressive and real verbs. We can use stories. “I’d be reading horoscopes”, says Ms. Seges. “That is …?” (Mr. Seges does not believe Ms. Seges would ever read horoscopes.) “This looks like a calligraphic copy of Vespucci’s letters. It was slipping out of our backyard hedge, no covers or front matter.” “Hadn’t it sure taken a lot to make such a book, I’d suspect that Babbitt next door. Bill once wrote me the book I was looking for was as likely to be obtained as a calligraphic of Vespucci’s originals. It was completely a legend, he checked with the Freeman’s.”
10.1. THE UNREAL PAST OR CONDITIONAL: REAL TIME
We do not have to view Modal, Conditional, or Unreal Past patterns as separate. With Perfect tenses, our syntactic HAVE helps tell about real time. It has an open real-time frame. With the Unreal Past or Conditional, HAVE tells about hypothetical time. HAVE is not part the real map, then. It comes with an auxiliary compass for relative time.
CHAPTER 10. FORM RELATIVITY GALORE
We can view verb forms as generally relative, for hypotheses. PRESENT forms can tell about the FUTURE. PAST forms can tell about the PRESENT. ANTECEDENT PAST forms can tell about the PAST.
9.4. MODAL RELATIVITY PRACTICE
Our use of the word "relativity" is not about physics or families. It is linguistic. We can acquire the Modal relativity step-by-step, and spare our arrows. Let us remember they indicate the target time, not the verb form.
9.3. DETAIL ON MODAL STRUCTURES
Modal Expression, especially the Interrogative or Negative, can give us some trouble, unless we approach the matter as science in a field: we analyze the molecules, see how they are doing, and make a model. We can recur to CHAPTER 5, as well as compare APPENDIX 4. 54. We CANNOT skip the exercises. … Continue reading 9.3. DETAIL ON MODAL STRUCTURES
9.2. THE MODAL TIME FRAME
We can actually live only in the real-time PRESENT. Our syntactic HAVE does not bring assertion about real time, when we attach it to a Modal and make a hypothesis. We do not need to view it as open-frame real time, then. We can view it as a syntactic anchor and a closed-frame hypothetical time.
9.1. MODAL SYNTAX, GRAMMATICAL PRESENT OR PAST
Let us focus on the auxiliary have. Would it make antecedent time extents altogether? Antecedent time extents always would be relative to the head time. To shape up a good idea for head verbs and time, we can venture common sense, as also in literature. The common sense truth here is that it can take real time to make hypotheses, but hypothetical time could never be the same as real time.
CHAPTER 9. TO TELL THE FASHION IN VALUABLE TIME
. . . Let us think about Madame Règle. She has the potential to have lunch at Latimer Sauf’s restaurant every day. He always has a table for his friends and she has enough money. However, her work with Paris haute couture designers often keeps her over the lunchtime. Her coming to lunch is probable, but not certain. CERTAINTY requires both potentiality and probability. Let us think about Monsieur Sauf’s birthday. Madame Règle will come to meet him. It is certain.
8.2. PRACTICE FOR ALL ASPECTS
To practice independent language use, we have only part the cues to put our verbs into the PAST, and then in the PRESENT. We mind Expression and do not give up on a mild sense of humor. “The grain of sand could think about wisdom. What was wisdom? It might be a grain of wit and manhood well resolved, but the grain of sand did not consider going into a drama like that of Samson the Agonist really necessary. Thinking about own format as potentiality by another, it deliberated whether it was, as a grain of sand, a fruit of ability or mere industriousness.”
