From: Kenneth Litwak (kenneth@sybase.com)
Date: Sun Oct 15 1995 - 23:01:56 EDT
I'm slooowwwly working my way through Porter's _Idioms_, and he makes much
of the significance of verbal aspect as opposed to categories invented
by earlier grammarians, like historical present, gnomic present, etc.
Yet, when he comes to a present used for narration (what I'd call an
historical present), he translates it the same way I would. So I don't see
what significance his distinction or critique has in this case. How is an
historical present different from a prsent tense with a verbal aspect such that
it is translated with a past referent? I think, in fact, that my profs should
be critiquing students in my seminar who translate this construction as
present tense, which happens a lot, given that we are in Mark all the time.
Ken Litwak
GTU
Bezerkley, CA
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:37:30 EDT