Re: Aspects of English Grammar
| From: | Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Sunday, March 14, 2004, 5:10 |
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From: "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@...>
> On Fri, Mar 12, 2004 at 10:07:57PM -0600, Nik Taylor wrote:
> > Philippe Caquant wrote:
> > >
> > > "To be about to" is possible in the future tense:
> > > Tomorrow morning, at the same time, I'll be about to
> > > take the train to Madrid...
> >
> > To this native speaker, that sounds, at best, only semi-gramatical.
> [snip]
>
> To this L2 speaker, that sounds decidedly weird. (And I'm known for coming
> up with weird ways of saying things. Such as, "it's a quarter to half
> past, let's go in." :-P)
If we're talking about English (I've missed out on part of this
thread), it's quite grammatical for me to use "be about to" with
the future tense of "be". It refers to the time in the immediate
future of an event that is in the future with reference to the
time of speaking -- that is, the going to Madrid is at two removes
from right now when I'm speaking.
And I'm a native speaker of English.
=========================================================================
Thomas Wier "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637
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