Timeline for Tense agreement in conditional statements: "I could do whatever I want" vs. "I could do whatever I wanted"
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
8 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 27, 2020 at 12:11 | comment | added | HeWhoMustBeNamed | Can you clarify on this point? StoneyB's answer seems to disagree with yours. It states that in sentences: 1. "I wished I had my own place. I wanted to throw a party the next week. If I had my own place, I could do whatever I wanted — I could throw a party. So I got my own place and I threw a party the next week." 2. "I wanted to throw a party the next week, so I talked to my landlady. She said I could do whatever I wanted. So I threw the party.", we cannot use "want" in place of "wanted". Do you agree with that? If so, can you tell me what makes backshifting compulsory in this case? | |
| Nov 16, 2019 at 0:13 | history | edited | John Lawler | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 1 character in body
|
| Nov 15, 2019 at 20:53 | comment | added | user8356 | I like this answer because it makes strong arguments for not being too rigid. | |
| Dec 6, 2015 at 5:52 | comment | added | BobRodes | Necrocomment: "If the tag-rag people did not clap him and hiss him according as he pleased and displeased them, as they use to do the players in the theatre, I am no true man." Shakespeare: Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 2, Line 255 | |
| Feb 16, 2015 at 23:58 | history | edited | John Lawler | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 21 characters in body
|
| Apr 14, 2013 at 18:59 | comment | added | John Lawler | For English learners, sure. For native speakers, the same sort of questions arise not because they don't know what to say, but because they've been trained into the typical Anglophone anxious cluelessness about grammar and "correctness". At least ESL learners have a chance of getting the facts right if they practice, but native speakers usually don't feel comfortable writing like they talk. | |
| Apr 14, 2013 at 18:55 | comment | added | tchrist♦ | John, I think this sort of thing crops up in people coming to English from a language with fairly strict rules regarding the “sequence of tenses” or mandatory mood changes in various sorts of subordinate clauses than English’s modal mish-mash normally shows. This leads to silly oversimplifications in ESL instruction materials trying to stave off mismapping the speaker’s first-language expectations onto English, but in so doing it disregards the many other valid ways that native English speakers put these things together. | |
| Apr 14, 2013 at 16:30 | history | answered | John Lawler | CC BY-SA 3.0 |