The grammar of the english verb phrase part 83 docx

Further remarks 10.9.1 One remark that can be added to the above conclusions is that the distinction between the Absolute Future System and the Pseudo-t0-System for reference to the post

(8h) If, as you say, this decision {will upset / #upsets} her, I will consider changing

it.(idem)

(8i) We won’t do it if itwill upset him (if we do it) (See comment below.)

In (8a⫺f) there is a rather loose syntactic and semantic relation between the

two clauses.13 The subclause has a large measure of syntactic independence

and is not integrated into the head clause semantically, as the latter can be fully

interpreted without reference to the subclause What is expressed in the

sub-clause is the speaker’s comment on the head sub-clause situation This comment is

made at t0, not at the post-present situation time of the head clause, and it is

meant to be interpreted transparently This explains the obligatory use of the

Absolute Future System

In (8g⫺h) the Absolute Future System must be used in the conditional clause

because this clause expresses a ‘closed’ condition rather than an open one That

is, the future fulfilment of the condition is assumed to be certain at t0 The

following is another instance of such a (typically echoic) ‘closed’ conditional:

If you will not be in receipt of a scholarship or Award or if the Award will be

inadequate to meet full fees and expenses of your course and your maintenance,

please state how you propose to meet those fees and expenses (www)

Finally, sentence (8i) [We won’t do it if it will upset him (if we do it)] shows

that the Absolute Future System is also the rule inif-clauses that serve as head

clause for another if-clause (whether overtly present or implied) In this type

of conditional, whose logical structure is ‘if [if q, then p], then q’, we have to

use the Absolute Future System in what looks like a conditional clause but is

really the head clause of another conditional ⫺ see also 10.6.8 above The

reason why the Absolute Future System formwill upset has to be used is that

(syntactically and semantically) this clause does not have a head clause

estab-lishing a post-present domain: the whole conditional means ‘We won’t do it if

[if we do it it will upset him]’ That is, the clause it will upset him is not

directly subordinate towe won’t do it It is a head clause rather than a

condi-tional clause, even though it is preceded byif The following is a similar

exam-ple:

If it’ll make you feel any better, I’ll buy you a drink (⫽ ‘I’ll buy you a drink if it’ll

make you feel any better if I buy you a drink.’)

13 The fact that the subclauses of (8a ⫺f) are not syntactically integrated into their head

clauses appears from a number of observations For example, they cannot be the focus

of negation, questioning or clefting, and they are not mopped up in the reference of

pro-forms likedo so or and so / neither.

568 10 Two tense systems with post-present reference

IV Further remarks

10.9.1 One remark that can be added to the above conclusions is that the distinction between the Absolute Future System and the Pseudo-t0-System for reference to the post-present runs perfectly parallel to the distinction between the conditional tense (or was going to ⫹ verb) and the preterite for reference

to a time that is W-posterior to a past orientation time Compare:

(a) Iwill punish him if he {is / *will be} late.

(b) [I told him] Iwould punish him if he {was / *would be} late.

(a) John {will be / #is} happy to hear that, whereas his wife {will be / #is} upset.

(b) [I expected that] John {would be / #was} happy to hear that, whereas his wife

{would be / #was} upset.

This parallelism between the distribution of the Absolute Future Systemvs the

Pseudo-t0-System and that of the conditional tensevs the preterite extends to

conditionals that have a tentative or counterfactual meaning.14 (In this type, past time-sphere tenses are used to express remoteness from reality rather than reference to past time.) We have seen that we cannot use will in open

conditionals, unless the if-clause itself functions as head clause for another

(overt or implicit)if-clause In the same way we cannot use would in tentative

and counterfactual if-clauses, unless the clause in question itself supports an if-clause:

(a) It would upset her if that {happened / *would happen}.

(b) If, as you say, that man {would be / #was} able to open our safe (if he had the

right instruments), we should consider buying another, more sophisticated one The reason for this perfect correlation between the expression of T-posteriority

in the present and past time-spheres may well be that it is both simpler and more economical to use parallel systems in the two time-spheres than to work with a different set of rules in each time-sphere

10.9.2 In this chapter we have been mainly concerned with the use of the present tense versus that of the future tense in subclauses referring to the post-present However, this distinction is just one instance of the more general dis-tinction between the Pseudo-t0-System and the Absolute Future System, and we

14 A conditional has a tentative meaning if it refers to a possible world which is assumed

by the speaker to be unlikely to be (or become) the actual world (e g.You would be punished if you did that) A conditional is counterfactual if it refers to a possible world

which is assumed by the speaker to be different from (incompatible with) the actual t 0 -world (e g.My life would be easier if I had a car).

could have referred to other tenses to illustrate the different distributions of

these systems Consider, for example, the following:

[If we dump his body in Soho,] the police will think that he was killed there after

hehad been unable to pay his gambling debts.

In this sentence the Absolute Future System formwill think indicates the central

orientation time of a post-present domain andwas killed is a Pseudo-t0-System

form representing its situation time as lying in the past of this central

orienta-tion time Since the situaorienta-tion of being killed is thus treated as if it were a past

one (i e it is represented as past relative to the central orientation time which

is treated as if it were t0), the past perfect (had been) is used to represent a

situation as T-anterior to it This form too is a Pseudo-t0-System form, as it

incorporates its situation time in the post-present domain As a matter of fact,

because the domain is created by will think, which is a ‘strong intensional

verb’ (see 10.6.6), the use of Pseudo-t0-System forms in the subclauses is

ob-ligatory The sentence becomes ungrammatical if we replace the Pseudo-t0

-System forms was killed and had been by the Absolute Future System forms

will have been killed and will have been:

[If we dump his body in Soho,] the police will think that he {was killed / *will

have been killed} there after he {had been / *will have been} unable to pay his

gambling debts

Examples like these make it clear that the use of the present tensevs the future

tense for post-present time reference should not be investigated in isolation It

is just once instance of the more general distinction between the Pseudo-t0

-System and the Absolute Future -System

10.9.3 It should be noted, finally, that the past counterparts of the Pseudo-t0

-System and the Absolute Future -System show the same distribution as the

Pseudo-t0-System and the Absolute Future System, respectively:

(a) If John {arrives / *will arrive} tomorrow, I {will fetch / *fetch} him from the

sta-tion

(b) [I said that] if John {arrived / *would arrive} the next day, I {would fetch /

*fetched} him from the station.

(a) You {will live / *live} to see the day when China {is / will be} an economic

su-perpower

(b) [I predicted that] they {would live / *lived} to see the day when China {was /

would be} an economic superpower.

See also the discussion of direct and indirect binding in 9.28⫺29

570 10 Two tense systems with post-present reference

V Summary

10.10.1 The basic difference between the Absolute Future System and the Pseudo-t0-System is that absolute tense forms relate the situation time to t0, whereas tense forms from the Pseudo-t0-System relate it to a post-present ‘basic orientation time’ From this it follows that an Absolute Future System form creates a post-present domain (which is at the same time a temporal domain and an intensional one), whereas the Pseudo-t0-System expresses a relation in

an already existing domain This means that the temporal specification effected

by an Absolute Future System form is independent of the surrounding linguistic context, whereas that effected by a Pseudo-t0-System form is not A Pseudo-t0 -System form requires a linguistic context providing the necessary post-present basic orientation time The use of the Pseudo-t0-System in a subclause is then

a sign that the situations referred to in the subclause and the head clause are closely related to each other, not only temporally but also logically: the sub-clause is fully integrated into the head sub-clause, and the two situations are pre-sented as forming an interpretive unit

10.10.2 We have discussed the typical cases of subclauses requiring either of the two systems as well as those that are compatible with both, and we have pointed out some factors that are relevant to the distribution of the two tense systems:

(a) Generally speaking, the subclauses that allow or require the use of the Pseudo-t0-System belong to one of the following types: subclauses func-tioning as subject or object of the predicate of the head clause (with the exception of those discussed in 10.4.6), restrictive relative clauses, and sub-clauses functioning as adverbials that are fully integrated in the head clause (i e functioning as ‘adjuncts’ rather than ‘disjuncts’ (Quirk et al 1985: 1071)

(b) The categories of subclause in which the Pseudo-t0-System has to be used express or connote some kind of open condition for the actualization of the head clause situation

temporal focus

11.2 The unmarked or marked choice of temporal focus 576 11.3 The manipulation of temporal focus for a specific purpose 581

572 11 Tense choice determined by temporal focus

Abstract

In this chapter we examine the phenomenon of

‘temporal focus’ When a speaker locates a

situa-tion time using an absolute tense, there are cases

in which the full situation including the situation

time extends (or is conceived of as extending)

over more than one time-zone, and in these cases

there is a choice as to the time-zone in which

the predicated situation is located There are

two conflicting influences on the choice of

tem-poral focus when using absolute tenses: the

sa-lience of the present moment in those cases in

which it is included in the time of the full

situa-tion, and the temporal focus of the surrounding

discourse When there is a clear conflict between

one of these influences and the choice of

time-zone (⫽ choice of temporal focus) made by the

speaker, we talk of ‘marked temporal focus’ We

speak of a ‘shift of temporal focus’ when the discourse switches from focus on one time-zone

to focus on another A shift of temporal focus from the present to the past may call up a past point of view from which a situation was ob-served and, often, evaluated This is often ex-ploited in narrative Such a shift of temporal fo-cus from the present to the past may also imply nonapplicability at speech time (ThusI was ing to help you tomorrow differs from I am go-ing to help you tomorrow in that it suggests that

my past intention is no longer valid.) In the case

of relative tenses, temporal focus involves not just a question of location in a particular time-zone but also a question of whether the focus is

on the situation time or on the orientation time

to which it is temporally subordinated

11.1 Definition of ‘temporal focus’

The ‘temporal focus’ of a speaker is the time on which, through a particular tense choice, he focuses in the use of any given clause In connection with absolute tenses, temporal focus can be defined as the phenomenon that the speaker draws attention to

a particular kind of time ⫺ past, pre-present, present or post-present ⫺ by locating a situation time in the corresponding ‘absolute time-zone’ This means that temporal focus is recoverable from the tense alone

11.1.1 A tense form always establishes a ‘situation time’ (i e the time of a

‘predicated situation’⫺ see 2.12) and locates it in a particular ‘absolute

time-zone’ (see 2.37) or, if it is a ‘relative tense’ (see 2.15.3), in a ‘temporal domain’

(see 2.15) whose ‘central orientation time’ (8.15) is located in a particular

time-zone The choice of tense reflects the choice of time that the speaker wishes to

focus his attention on This is most easily illustrated with absolute tense forms:

when using the present tense the speaker focuses on the time with which the

situation time coincides, viz t0 When using the absolute past tense he focuses

on the past time-zone in which the situation time is located Hence the

differ-ence betweenis and was in He is no longer the brilliant scientist that he was.

It is when the ‘full situation’ (see 2.12) encompasses both the past and the

present time-zones that the notion of temporal focus seems most pertinent As

will be explained below, the difference betweenThe man who left just now is

a sales representative and The man who left just now was a sales representative

is a question of temporal focus: using is, the speaker just says what is the

current profession of the man who left just now; by using was, the speaker

focuses on a given past time, which in this context will naturally be the time

when the addressee saw the man leave and perhaps wondered who he was

11.1.2 Focusing on a time at which a situation time is located requires that

the time in question be somehow identifiable to the hearer or reader This is

normally the case if there is a time-specifying adverbial, because the speaker’s

temporal focus is then narrowed down to the Adv-time which ‘contains’ (⫽

includes or coincides with ⫺ see 2.23.1) the situation time in question This

explains the difference between the following:

The milkis sour (focus on t 0 , which is by definition identifiable)

The milk was sour (This is not fully interpretable in isolation We need to know

what time the speaker is focusing on.)

The milkwas sour when I opened the bottle (This is fully interpretable because the

time-specifying adverbial narrows down the speaker’s focus to a definite past time.)