Re: Grammar - Can
| From: | Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, January 12, 2005, 14:14 |
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On Wed, Jan 12, 2005 at 12:42:27PM +0200, Isaac Penzev wrote:
> Ho! McGuffey calls many questions on my side too. Sometimes I fail to
> understand the precise meaning of short sentences. E.g. "The dog ran". Does
> it mean the same as "The dog was running to and fro"? Or is it "The dog has
> run away"?
It means simply "The dog was running"; anything beyond that is left unstated,
so I guess you are free to imagine whatever context you want. But
don't infer anything from the fact that the simple past was used instead
of the past progressive; that's just a case of simplifying for the
pedagogical purposes of the text.
> Or what does the phrase "See the man!" mean? I've got at least two variants
> of interpretation: "Behold, here is that man!" or "Have a look at that man!"
As punctuated, it can only mean the latter. The former would put a
comma after "See" just as your rephrasing has a comma after "Behold".
-Marcos