Timeline for Do 'already' and 'just' require the present perfect?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
16 events
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| Jun 15, 2020 at 7:40 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
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| Jul 24, 2019 at 12:34 | answer | added | Madaya | timeline score: -1 | |
| Jan 4, 2015 at 10:45 | history | edited | Elberich Schneider | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Aug 19, 2012 at 17:28 | review | Close votes | |||
| Aug 25, 2012 at 3:02 | |||||
| Aug 17, 2012 at 8:33 | comment | added | Barrie England | Even in British English, the past tense is possible with ‘already’ in some contexts. | |
| Aug 17, 2012 at 7:37 | vote | accept | Elberich Schneider | ||
| Aug 17, 2012 at 7:24 | answer | added | Barry Brown | timeline score: 4 | |
| Aug 16, 2012 at 14:33 | comment | added | John Lawler | Is the discussion about "formally"? I meant formal grammar, of course, since the discussion is about grammar (I take "require the present perfect" to be a term of grammatical art). In formal grammar, one must account for all and only the grammatical utterances, and specify precisely in which contexts and under which circumstances every construction is required, forbidden, or optional. Both the Past Tense and the Present Perfect Construction are optional with already, and with just, in these senses. That's all. | |
| Aug 16, 2012 at 13:08 | comment | added | StoneyB on hiatus | @JohnLawler I shall have to be more careful: formal doesn't mean quite the same thing to a literary scholar as it does to a linguist. Although well-formed, "Milton already gave us his context in the preceding line" would have been regarded by the professors of my youth as unacceptably colloquial in a formal essay. | |
| Aug 16, 2012 at 8:32 | comment | added | Andrew Leach♦ | Far be it from me to contradict a linguistics professor! This is one of the differences between American English and British English. | |
| Aug 16, 2012 at 8:17 | comment | added | Elberich Schneider | @Andrew Leach ... then John Lawler is wrong(!?). | |
| Aug 16, 2012 at 8:10 | comment | added | Andrew Leach♦ | Related: english.stackexchange.com/questions/76800/… British English does use the present perfect, almost exclusively. | |
| Aug 16, 2012 at 0:34 | comment | added | John Lawler | Not even formally. Already and just are complex temporal adverbs, but adverbs do not govern constructions; verbs do. In this case, there is no reason to require a perfect construction, though it's acceptable, as is the past tense. | |
| Aug 16, 2012 at 0:02 | answer | added | bib | timeline score: 2 | |
| Aug 15, 2012 at 23:45 | comment | added | StoneyB on hiatus | Formally, yes; colloquially, no; and the colloquial usage will probably be formally acceptable within a generation. | |
| Aug 15, 2012 at 23:38 | history | asked | Elberich Schneider | CC BY-SA 3.0 |