Timeline for "Joan walked out and has left her bag"
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
20 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 14, 2023 at 19:03 | history | bumped | CommunityBot | This question has answers that may be good or bad; the system has marked it active so that they can be reviewed. | |
| Jul 17, 2023 at 9:03 | history | bumped | CommunityBot | This question has answers that may be good or bad; the system has marked it active so that they can be reviewed. | |
| Mar 18, 2023 at 16:05 | history | bumped | CommunityBot | This question has answers that may be good or bad; the system has marked it active so that they can be reviewed. | |
| Nov 14, 2022 at 7:00 | history | bumped | CommunityBot | This question has answers that may be good or bad; the system has marked it active so that they can be reviewed. | |
| Jul 15, 2022 at 1:00 | history | bumped | CommunityBot | This question has answers that may be good or bad; the system has marked it active so that they can be reviewed. | |
| Mar 11, 2022 at 6:05 | history | bumped | CommunityBot | This question has answers that may be good or bad; the system has marked it active so that they can be reviewed. | |
| Nov 11, 2021 at 3:02 | history | bumped | CommunityBot | This question has answers that may be good or bad; the system has marked it active so that they can be reviewed. | |
| Oct 11, 2021 at 3:17 | comment | added | Sunny Lee | Many thanks for your comments, everyone. I enjoyed and learned a lot. I am still wondering what in the Joan example caused the zeugma effect. Thank You All. | |
| Oct 10, 2021 at 14:36 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | I think the "Joan" example is a form of zeugma. Without the Perfect, both actions (walking out, and leaving the bag) both happened in the past, which makes it reasonable to link them using and. And because it's quite natural in English to start with a Perfect, then drop back to Simple Past, Joan has walked out and left her bag is fine too. But and is too "weak" a link to fluently tie together Past walked out and "Present" bag is [still] left behind. | |
| Oct 10, 2021 at 14:01 | comment | added | Sunny Lee | @FumbleFingers Thanks for your comment. Your sentence 'Joan walked out but she left her bag' surely sounds much better, in fact, perfectly good. What I am interested in is why the OP's Joan example sounds odd. (A book on linguistics states that the Joan example sentence 'sounds very strange'. but does not give any explanation about the strangeness.) As you stated, the sentence seems neither to be syntactically bad, nor to be semantically wrong. I would be very grateful if you would give any opinion regarding it. Thanks again. | |
| Oct 10, 2021 at 12:41 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @SunnyLee: I'm certainly not suggesting OP's text is syntactically invalid - just that it's "not really" idiomatic. Maybe in your relatively contrived context, the juxtaposition of Simple Past and Present Perfect conjoined by and would pass muster, but to be honest I still don't really like it. I'd most likely change the conjunction to but as well as maintaining the parallel verb forms: Joan walked out but she left her bag. OR use the Perfect ONCE, FIRST: Joan has walked out but she left her bag if it was important to stress "current relevance" | |
| Oct 10, 2021 at 8:58 | comment | added | Sunny Lee | @FumbleFingers I don't think it is difficult to come up with a situation in which the present perfect in the "Joan"example makes a sense. Assume that, in the middle of conversation with others, Joan got a call and walked out of the meeting room, without taking her bag with her, that she has not come back to the room for the bag until now, and that her bag is therefore still in the meeting room. In such a situation, do you think the "Joan" example sentence above sounds good? | |
| Oct 9, 2021 at 17:35 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @gotube: That's all perfectly true, but I don't see how it relates to the fact that OP's "Joan" example isn't really idiomatically valid. OIC - you don't think there's anything wrong with it! | |
| Oct 9, 2021 at 16:54 | answer | added | gotube♦ | timeline score: 1 | |
| Oct 9, 2021 at 16:43 | comment | added | gotube♦ | @FumbleFingers Present perfect can refer to finished single events in the past, so long as they have a present result, and that present result is the focus of the clause. "I've lost my keys" is a single event in the past, and it means, "I'm missing my keys right now." | |
| Oct 9, 2021 at 16:16 | history | edited | Eddie Kal | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
deleted 62 characters in body; edited title
|
| Oct 9, 2021 at 16:10 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | ...for a more "borderline" case, consider John caught Covid and was / has been admitted to hospital. Where the Present Perfect version pragmatically entails that John must currently still be in hospital, but with the Simple Past version he might have recovered and been discharged (or he might even have died by the time of speaking; it's "agnostic" on that score). | |
| Oct 9, 2021 at 16:01 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | It's not just a matter of saying your "Joan" example violates tense agreement. The reason the "Tom" example works is because Present Perfect has lived there specifically refers to the entire time between Tom moving to NY and the present time of speaking (something that started in the past has continued until now). But in the "Joan" example, she only left her bag behind once (at the same time as leaving) - there's no sense of continuing to leave the bag, right up until time of speaking. | |
| S Oct 9, 2021 at 15:48 | review | First questions | |||
| Oct 9, 2021 at 16:16 | |||||
| S Oct 9, 2021 at 15:48 | history | asked | Sunny Lee | CC BY-SA 4.0 |