Chapter 3. Time is like a river: verb patterns

Everyday language has phrases as a flow or passage of time, a course or current of events: we people happen to have such impressions about life and time. Let us imagine a river of time.

For known theories, such a river might be turbulent on occasions and have some relativity or even loops, but we know it is not always as bad.

We may imagine there are pods of time, to help get across the river: to write or speak, we obviously do not run or drive the real time, as European Western or Universal, or USA Pacific, Mountain, or Central.

We use the grammatical time in context.

Our pods of time can carry us through the river, even if the run is very fast. The symbolic river and pods (as for space flight?) can help with imagined tasks, before we take real linguistic challenges in real time. We may always abandon the imagery.

Spring Flowing Colors

In the river, there show word patterns, and the pods of
time open with them. If we use a pattern, the pod will give us a way.

We may not have any way to predict exactly what pattern there comes to appear, and we may need to learn to tell them apart (as with everyday language), but all patterns can have the words we know from the fields of time, and some patterns always have at least one of those words. We have the words marked in green, with the patterns.

The river shows the grammatical PRESENT, PAST, and FUTURE, with particles as ING and 3RD.
Let us compare the fields of time.

In our fields, we may choose to consider the PRESENT first, then the PAST and the FUTURE: we usually refer to own experience and knowledge, to think about the future. We are always in our PRESENT.

All this may look a lot to think about at first, and this is why we begin with having a good glimpse: we see what forms there mostly are, to learn to use them a bit later. Let us make a few observations.

In the fields and the river alike, the verbs to be and to have can make patterns that tell about the PRESENT, PAST, or FUTURE. The particle ING comes together with the verb to be. Verb 3RD form comes with the verb to have. The feature “S“ occurs as in our PRESENT field of time, with objects of thought we can speak about with pronouns he, she, or it. We have a note on in ■CHAPTER 1. Feel welcome to further journey.

We people are individual in our learning. If we please, we may have a peek at chapter 4, before we continue from here.

3.1. Field and river, the grammatical Aspect

There is no single landscape all people reasonably could be advised always to bear in mind. With life, grammar, and landscapes as well, we need to regard and decide the Aspect on our own. The Latin aspectus meant “a seeing, looking at”. ■More

by Teresa Pelka August 14, 2013June 10, 2024

Chapter 4. Aspect cognitive variables

Humans naturally build mind perspectives for neighborhoods or vicinity, in familiar settings. Since the very beginning, people have lived in places that allow the horizontal plane: to sit, have meals, sleep; read, write, or paint. Human grammar has evolved on planet Earth. ■More

by Teresa Pelka October 3, 2014July 15, 2024

■This text is also available in Polish.

Book format in preparation.

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, 2025.

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
■E-pub | NOOK Book | Kindle
■Hard cover, Barnes & Noble | Lulu