As there seem to be a number of us around here with significant grammatical knowledge, and the Grammar Harpy topic died a while ago, I figure we need a new incarnation.
I’m pretty good with grammar, but I certainly don’t know everything, so I’m going to start off with a question for the other gurus out there:
We all know that English has six basic tenses: present, past, future (I do, I did, I will/shall do), and the perfective/completive of each of those (I have done, I had done, I will have done).
But there’s a whole set of six other constructions that complement those six:
I am doing, I was doing,… , I will have been doing
Are these separate tenses? If so, what are they called? If not… what are they?
LL
My recollection is that the following terms are used:
I am doing = present progressive
I was doing = past progressive (simple past progressive)
I will be doing = future progressive
I have been doing = perfect progressive
I had been doing = past perfect progressive
I will have been doing = future perfect progressive
Oh Ghod. I hate the grammar threads; they always seem to end up with people sniping at each other.
I also hate the FTL threads. Someday I’m going to grow the stones to move them all to MPSIMS, since the current science says that the speed of light is the cosmic speed limit for mass-having particles.
So as long as I have to read and moderate this thread, what is the appropriate verb tense for someone who plans to travel back in time to kill his father before he is born?
manhattan: I believe the issue is addressed in one of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books (perhaps the second one?) when our heroes time-travel to “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.”
That looks about right to me . . . [inserting object up ass] “As I must read and moderate this thread, what is the appropriate verb tense for someone planning to travel back in time to kill his father before said father can be born?”
I was considering the fact that technically speaking, one cannot bear one’s self, and as such I was going to do a bit about his mother bearing him, but I do not care enough, nor is the object long enough or sharp enough.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled grammar harpiness. BTW, I hereby volunteer my services as a grammar harpy, as was the case in the thread AerynSun started.