Re: Tense and aspect (was: savoir-connaître)

On 29 Dec 2004, at 1.06 am, J. 'Mach' Wust wrote:

> On Tue, 28 Dec 2004 01:54:52 -0500, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
> wrote:
>
>>> Tomorrow I go to work
>>
>> Most languages allow this very construction, do they not?  Can one not
>> say in French, "Demain je vais au bureau"?
>
> When I learnt English, the teachers would correct me if I hadn't said
> "tomorrow, I will work" or "tomorrow, I'm going to work". What about
> "tomorrow, I work"?
Possible... 'I work tommorrow' sounds perfectly natural to me. Requires
something habitual though I think, here 'tomorrow' doesn't mean 'the
day after today' but 'the day after today (and other days that fulfil
some criteria this day fulfils)', so when I say 'I don't work
tomorrow', I *probably* mean 'I don't usually work on Wednesdays'. Of
course, this habituality is from the simple present; if we use the
present progressive, 'I'm working tomorrow', we lose this entirely. I
believe the present progressive is the closer translation of many other
languages' normal present tense. In fact, if I was trying to organise a
meeting with a friend and he suggested next Monday, I'd reply: 'Nah,
I'm working then (and getting double time and a half, so I'm not
calling in sick!)', where we have three verbs in a present tense but
all meaning future.

> In German, it's common not to use the present tense for
> future actions. (There are indeed linguists who say that the use of the
> "werden" periphrasis as an expression of the future tense is a
> latinizing
> invention, and that its meaning is rather modal.)
Pardon?

>>> Tomorrow I am going to work
>>
>> English use of the progressive vs the simple present is admittedly a
>> complicated topic which has never been adequately reduced to rule
>> form;
>> but it's not really related to the future tense.
>
> Have a look at an English course for foreigners, and you'll see that
> English
> is teached to have two future tenses: The construction with the
> auxiliary
> _will_ (and maybe _shall_) and the construction with _to be going to_.
Right you are, but in the context, the 'going' here was referring to
travel, the 'to' the DO, and 'work' the place. Hence, the present
progressive was intended. The next one ('Tomorrow I'm going to go to
work') is the future tense you were looking for. (In most informal
writing and speech, there's less ambiguity with 'Tomorrow I'm gonna
work' being obviously future-verb and 'Tommorow I'm going to work'
usually being pres.-prog.-travel+noun.)

--
Tristan.