Timeline for What are the rules of copular "to be" tense in pseudo-cleft sentences?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
8 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 26, 2023 at 21:17 | comment | added | Greybeard | My opinion is that trying to apply rules to English is often pointless and thankless task. I can think of individual contexts in which any form of the verb "to be" would be correct. I hoped my examples would indicate as much. | |
| Apr 26, 2023 at 17:41 | comment | added | Lyubov Berezina | Thank you for your comment! @Greybeard If you don’t mind, I would like to ask your opinion on the idea that is presented in the book that I referred to in my post. The author says that regardless of the verb and the tense that is used in the pseudo-cleft part, the copula can only be IS or WAS - for non-past and past respectively. I thought that means that the copula cannot be “has been” or “has been”. What is your opinion on it? Perhaps, I got it all wrong… | |
| Apr 26, 2023 at 16:38 | comment | added | Tuffy | @Greybeard Sorry if I was dense. I felt the point might be more explicitly made, rather than being, as it were in parenthesis. But essentially, it seems, we agree. | |
| Apr 26, 2023 at 14:37 | history | edited | Greybeard | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 695 characters in body
|
| Apr 26, 2023 at 14:18 | comment | added | Greybeard | @Tuffy I thought I had done that with [now, currently, at this moment, still] and [at that time] "What he did to me <ten years ago> is why I am [now, currently, at this moment, still] unemployed." --Compare "What he did to me <ten years ago/at that time> was why I was [at that time] unemployed." | |
| Apr 26, 2023 at 13:44 | comment | added | BillJ | What evidence do you have to support the fact that your examples contain 'fused' relative constructions. | |
| Apr 26, 2023 at 13:35 | comment | added | Tuffy | Could this be filled out a little? Isn't the point of the timing not so much whether the act itself is past or present or whether its effects are past or present? So: "What he did to me <ten years ago> is why I am <now> unemployed." But perhaps also, "What you did to me ten years ago is/was why I set fire to your house yesterday. | |
| Apr 26, 2023 at 13:03 | history | answered | Greybeard | CC BY-SA 4.0 |