Timeline for Present simple on temporary action
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
12 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 7, 2013 at 17:46 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | I'm not convinced by that last edit. The difference is that present simple can still be used if the preceding clause is Mary will be sleeping in the living room. It's not to do with whether the decorating has started as such - it's to do with the scope of while, which has to encompass both Mary's sleeping arrangements and the decorating. | |
| Jan 7, 2013 at 17:40 | history | edited | Barrie England | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jan 7, 2013 at 17:39 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | Groenewold, business manager of the Colorado Daily, charged, "The noxious bells . . . distract me while I work, disturb my work schedule, and have caused me great mental and emotional damage." I don't see why present simple should "disallowed" with while. | |
| Jan 7, 2013 at 17:31 | comment | added | Barrie England | @Peter Shor. Don’t distract me while I’m working. | |
| Jan 7, 2013 at 17:14 | comment | added | Barrie England | Mary sleeps in the living room while we redecorate her room is a grammatical sentence, but likely to be found only in a certain kind of narrative context. | |
| Jan 7, 2013 at 17:10 | comment | added | Peter Shor | If you knew that redecorating was going to take exactly one month, I think you could still use the present here. I think it has something to do with the while clause. Can you think of a while clause in which the present progressive is allowable, but the present simple is not. | |
| Jan 7, 2013 at 17:10 | comment | added | Cerberus - Reinstate Monica | Is that really the reason? Is not the present continuous used with events of uncertain duration in many situations? Isn't this rather about subordinate clauses? | |
| Jan 7, 2013 at 17:10 | comment | added | DropDropped | If we don't know how long it will take to redecorate the room, we also don't know for how long she'd sleep in the living room - so is it possible to use the sentence "Mary sleeps in the living room while we redecorate her room"? | |
| Jan 7, 2013 at 17:06 | history | undeleted | Barrie England | ||
| Jan 7, 2013 at 17:06 | history | edited | Barrie England | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jan 7, 2013 at 16:58 | history | deleted | Barrie England | ||
| Jan 7, 2013 at 16:57 | history | answered | Barrie England | CC BY-SA 3.0 |