Herb - Great post!  Perhaps it will help me out when I try to mess with my students' minds (for example, when I tell them that "ain't" should be a word in standard English to make up for the inability of the language to contract the predicate and negation of the first person singular conjugation of "to be" in both declarative and interrogative sentences.  If "won't" works, why not "ain't"?).  Is it just that there are no curious kids any more?  Their reaction to new ideas is total rejection.  It's not that they're just incredulous - they insist that ignorance is the preferred state!  Anybody else find students like that?  Sort of reminds me of some recent posts here.  Maybe it's just verbs and verb tenses that create such an emotional response!
 
Geoff


Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2008 21:31:13 -0400
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Does English have a future tense?
To: [log in to unmask]

We have discussed once or twice whether English has a future tense.  Here’s a link to an article titled “The Lord which was and is” by Geoffrey Pullum on Language Log that briefly reviews a considerable range of data involve “will” and other constructions and their meanings.  Pullum is coauthor with Rodney Huddleston of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Langauge.

 

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/

 

Scroll down till you find the title.

 

Herb

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