Timeline for The past form of "must"
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
12 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Feb 26 at 6:45 | comment | added | brilliant | "That sentence is completely valid. Why do you say it's wrong?" - Because that's future-in-the-past, in which case "will" must be turned into "would": "She says now that she will do it, so I hope she will." -> "She said 20 years ago that she would do that, and yet she never did." The "future" in the second sentence is already in the past relative to the time of speaking. In other words, the time when she had a chance to deliver on her promise is already over. | |
| Feb 26 at 5:22 | comment | added | Jay | @brilliant "She said she will come." At some time in the past, she said that, in the future, from the point of view of the time when she made the statement, she will come. That sentence is completely valid. Why do you say it's wrong? | |
| Feb 26 at 5:20 | comment | added | Jay | "That doesn't mean that you can always lump together different tenses in one sentence whatever way you want ..." Of course not. Each verb should have the correct tense for the action described. You appear to be interpreting my words to mean that you can use whatever tense you feel like for any verb regardless of when it happens. If I was unclear and gave that impression, sorry. No, the tense of each verb must match when the action that that verb describes takes place. | |
| Feb 25 at 23:55 | comment | added | brilliant | (2) You CAN'T use plain present form of a verb to denote something that is the future from the point of view of someone's talk in the sentence, yet is already the past from the point of view of the time when the whole sentence is produced. Take a look: "She said she WILL come, so we're still waiting for her" - correct. "She said she WOULD come, so we're still waiting for her" - correct. "She said she WOULD come, but she never did" - correct. "She said she WILL come, but she never did" - wrong! | |
| Feb 25 at 23:55 | comment | added | brilliant | (1) "I'm saying that one sentence can include multiple tenses." - That's correct, but that doesn't mean that you can always lump together different tenses in one sentence whatever way you want, especially when one verb is employed to describe the contents of someone's talk, for example, when a verb follows the verb "said". | |
| Feb 25 at 14:38 | comment | added | Jay | I'm not saying that a future tense is used to refer to a past action or vice versa. I'm saying that one sentence can include multiple tenses. If one action referred to in the sentence is in the past and another action referred to in the same sentence is in the future, then we use different tenses to relate them. | |
| Feb 25 at 14:36 | comment | added | Jay | @brilliant RE "trivial example": That's the point. One action is in the past and so uses past tense; another action is in the future and so uses future tense. So both past and future are used in the same sentence. | |
| Feb 25 at 5:03 | comment | added | brilliant | (4) However, if even now, that is, 10 years later, he has still not forgotten, then the sentence "Members ... said to him ten years ago that he WILL forget ..." is still correct because the word "will" in it refers to the time, which is still the future relative to the moment of saying this sentence. | |
| Feb 25 at 5:02 | comment | added | brilliant | (3) "Consider, "Members ... said to him ten years ago that he will forget ..." The saying is ten years ago. The forgetting is in the future" - If by the moment of saying this sentence this future has already become the past, that is, the act of forgetting has already transpired, then this sentence is grammatically incorrect. The correct way would be this: "Members ... said to him ten years ago that he WOULD forget ...". | |
| Feb 24 at 10:39 | comment | added | brilliant | (2) We don't see in this sentence the word "will" describing an action of the past, nor do we see the past-tense "read" describing a future action. Same with "Yesterday I decided that I will go on vacation next Thursday." The past-form "decided" describes an action of the past (that is, of yesterday) and the word "will" describes the action of going on vacation, which is, relative to the moment of speaking, of the future. So, where is that "mixing of verb tenses" in these two examples? | |
| Feb 24 at 10:39 | comment | added | brilliant | (1) "A trivial example would be, "Yesterday I read a book and tomorrow I will watch a movie."" - I don't quite see how this one is a good example of "mixing verb tenses". The verb "read" here denotes an action that took place in the past (relative to the time of speaking) as denoted by the word "yesterday". Hence we have the past-tense form "read". And the the action of watching a movie belongs to the future (relative to the time of speaking) as denoted by the word "tomorrow". Hence we have "will". | |
| Feb 24 at 10:03 | history | answered | Jay | CC BY-SA 4.0 |