Timeline for Past tense when narrating dreams
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
5 events
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| Jan 24, 2018 at 20:46 | history | edited | TimR | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jan 24, 2018 at 20:41 | comment | added | TimR | Again, you have a fundamental misunderstanding, owing in part to the way Quirk describes things. The important word here is orientation. It is not an objective orientation but a subjective orientation: the tense reveals if, and if so, how, the speaker understands and wishes to portray the event in relation to other events in time. The tenses REVEAL a subjective reality, they do not necessarily CONFORM to an objective reality. | |
| Jan 24, 2018 at 19:57 | comment | added | Alexey Nekrashevich | Thank you. The book says "The past perfective may be said to denote any event or state anterior to a time of orientation in the past." and "perfective indicates anterior time; i.e time preceding whatever time orientation is signalled by tense or by other elements of the sentence or its context."(The flight was cancelled after we had paid for the tickets. - the time of cancelling the flight is the time orientation for 'had paid'). So when I see all these specified times in this text (breakfast, etc.) and that the dream is anterior to them, I assume they play some role here. What am I missing? | |
| Jan 24, 2018 at 19:26 | history | edited | TimR | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jan 24, 2018 at 19:21 | history | answered | TimR | CC BY-SA 3.0 |