Dear Rosanne,

You wrote:
> Actually, more than one tense can be used in a paragraph, even in
> adjacent sentences,
>
My reply: No one will be so naive as to conclude that there can be only one
kind of tense in a paragraph. Or else, we will fall into again the
difficulty between Simple Past paragraph and Present Prefect paragraph.

I just explained that in the following situation:
Ex: Yesterday I saw a new department store open around my home. I bought
many things from it.
== We may not have a hectic argument on using Simple Past or Present
Perfect. In my website I call this combination as {Past + Past}.

Or will you explain, in this above example, why you can use Present Perfect
(for the second sentence)? Because of Perfective aspect? Current relevance?
Resultative Perfect? Or a period up to the present? (Present Perfect relates
to more jargons than you can collect.)

On the other hand, in some situations, we can only use {Past + Perfect}.
That is, the timeline of the situations demands the use of Present Perfect.
This has been explained in my humble website.

Thank you for your attention.

Shun
englishtense.com




----- Original Message -----
From: "Rosanne Gangi-Gaertner" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, May 19, 2001 8:24 PM
Subject: Re: The main use of a tense


> Dear Shun:
>
> Actually, more than one tense can be used in a paragraph, even in adjacent
> sentences, e.g.,
>
> "Yesterday, I saw a new department store open near my home. I'm going to
> visit it tomorow."
>
> Tense is a sentence-level phenomenon; however, I do agree with you that
> many grammar texts use too many sentences out of context and should
present
> more contextualized material.
>
> Rosanne Gangi-Gaertner
>
>
> >Ex: Yesterday I saw a new department store open around my home. I bought
> >many things from it.
> >== Simple Past is compulsory, used to connect to the time of the former
> >sentence. It is the true use of a tense. Likewise, the true use of a
brick
> >is seen in the companionship of other bricks. We may argue that a brick
can
> >be sometimes used as a hammer, or sending messages through windows or
> >holding down tarps, but at least we have to state its main use first as
you
> >do.
> >
> >Nevertheless, since using many sentences to explain a tense seems
> >troublesome, present-day grammars prefer to keep on one-sentence basis.
This
> >is convenient, but results in more troublesome than they can imagine.
They
> >obviously miss the true use of tense.
> >
> >Shun
> >englishtense.com
>
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>
>

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