tailieunhanh - The grammar book teacher course part 25

Moreover, we would hope to do so in a manner that improves upon or accelerates what learners are able to accomplish on their own. With regard to these aspirations, we can be less equivocal. We firmly believe that teachers will be better prepared to meet their students' learning needs if they have a firm grounding in the grammar of the language they are teaching. | Chapter 9 The Tense-Aspect-Modality System in Discourse 163 What a signals is the current relevance that the response is believed to have whereas b does not signal any assumption of current relevance. In fact b puts the speaker s last meal squarely in the past rather than the present Another example that suggests Bull is correct to take us away from a linear perspective on tense and aspect to a three- or four-tiered system is to consider the future perfect which asks the listener to step into the future and look back. It is quite possible as the following example shows for an event action described with a future perfect 1 to have occurred before one described with the simple past 2 I. He will have finished all that work months ago. You don t know John the way I do saw John at the market yesterday. Each axis in Bull s framework has a neutral or basic time slot in the middle and two possible marked slots one on the left signaling a time before the basic time of the axis and the other on the right signaling a time after the basic time of that axis. Based on this semantic framework each tense of any language can then be placed in the appropriate slot on the appropriate axis. It is quite likely however that any given language will not fill each possible slot with a unique form and that any given language might turn out to have some overlap or substitutability of forms across slots. See Table for our interpretation of Bull s axes applied to English and their corresponding verb tense forms with input from Houts Smith 1993 Table The Bull Framework Basic axis time Axis of A time before the corresponding to the A time after the orientation basic axis time moment of reference basic axis time Future By 5 00 he will have finished all the chores future perfect He . I I is going to J eat dinner at 5 00. simple future Upon completion of this work he f WH1 1 watch TV. is going to J no distinct form use simple future Present He has played golf since I960 present perfect