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Uniqueness of "until" in English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| yong321 Groupie United States yong321.freeshe Joined 5542 days ago 80 posts - 104 votes  Studies: Spanish | Message 25 of 31 24 November 2009 at 11:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks everybody. I started this thread to discuss the "side effect" of "until" but it changed to a debate about the grammar of "The scientists didn't find the solution until now". It looks like the majority think that's grammatically incorrect and should be changed to "did not have" or "had not found". That's fine.
I want to bring to your attention that http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/till has an example "He did not come till today." And Merriam-Webster http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/until has "we don't open until ten". Note "come" and "open" are actions that do not last. In addition, Hencke reported that the pages limited to UK have this stat: "didn't see it until now" - 39,400 hits I don't know what search string was used. I didn't find much difference in hit counts if I limit to web servers ending with uk. Check the search strings I use in the following URLs: http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=%22didn%27t+do+it+until+now%2 2+site%3Auk&aq=f&aqi=&oq=&fp=654dd3ffb755ee28 http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=%22didn%27t+see+it+until+now% 22+site%3Auk&aq=f&aqi=&oq=&fp=654dd3ffb755ee28 http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=%22didn%27t+find+it+until+now %22+site%3Auk&aq=f&aqi=&oq=&fp=654dd3ffb755ee28 Nevertheless, if "didn't find it until" is incorrect, I'll stop saying that. Edited by yong321 on 25 November 2009 at 9:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6894 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 26 of 31 25 November 2009 at 10:32am | IP Logged | ||
I'll clarify how I searched then: I went to www.google.co.uk and searched for "didn't find it until now" (in double quotes), and then ticked "pages from the UK" and repeated each of the searches to get the number of hits from the UK. I just tried your search links above (NB removing the spurious space by hand) and I am getting similar results as the UK numbers I reported before, except for "didn't see it until now", which only returns 8 hits. Edited by Hencke on 25 November 2009 at 10:41am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| AlexL Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7084 days ago 197 posts - 277 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 27 of 31 25 November 2009 at 3:54pm | IP Logged | ||
Don't open until ten sounds perfectly correct to me. The real meaning is "We will not open until ten o'clock." There is nothing wrong with this; it does not have to be in the perfect tense. I'm surprised about the other example though. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6011 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 28 of 31 25 November 2009 at 4:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yong321,
The mistake you're making is thinking of grammar in terms of form alone, rather than form and function. As I said, it's about the moment of utterance (when it's said) and the moment of occurrence (when it happens). "I didn't arrive until just now." Effectively I am saying that the moment of utterance and the moment of occurrence are the same -- I am describing an event as it's occurring. This is easiest to do in the first person, as there is no delay in me becoming aware of this news. This can be extended to "We didn't arrive until just now." I wouldn't say it, but it doesn't jar with me to hear it. "He didn't arrive until just now." This is a little bit trickier, but still possible. We must assume that the speaker is at the destination of "he", and therefore experiences "he"'s arrival, and that the person being spoken to either isn't there (eg phone conversation) or is there, but has also just arrived, so hasn't experienced their arrival (or lack of presence previously). This of course can be extended to "They didn't arrive until now." So why do people object to "The scientists didn't find it until now"? I would say that using "the scientists" distances the speaker from the action. Perhaps it is because you're using a noun rather than a pronoun which makes you seem distant. Perhaps it is simply that you aren't likely to be observing the scientists, and that only a scientist (which your wording implies you aren't) would be aware of the point of discovery to be able to report it simultaneous to occurrence. So the problem is that there is not enough involvement in the sentence -- it's a passive report and not immediate enough to support "until now". That reminds me -- I really need to read more on Systemic Functional Linguistics. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| yong321 Groupie United States yong321.freeshe Joined 5542 days ago 80 posts - 104 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 29 of 31 25 November 2009 at 9:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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Aside from the grammatical debate on "did not find until", I'm more interested in the state of change (for lack of a better word) of "until" in English, i.e., "until" means at the point in time or from the point on, what the verb indicates changes to its negative. So, let me summarize:
Case 1: In English, "until" always implies change of state: "They didn't have it until now" means they have it now. Case 2: In Spanish (and Japanese?), it depends on the tense of the predicate, as Hencke pointed out: "No habían encontrado una solución hasta ahora" - they have found it now "No han encontrado una solución hasta ahora" - they are still trying (I asked three Mexican-Spanish speakers in Houston, Texas. A lady agrees with Hencke. Two men thought a long time and gave up.) I think this sentence, copied from a local magazine, "...; el inglés fue muy dificil para mí y hasta ahorita todavia se batalla.", is like the "No han..." example. Case 3: In Chinese, it purely depends on the context or the meaning of the sentence, although in most cases the change of state does not happen: "直到现在他[还]没有找到解决办法" means so far he still hasn't found a solution; "直到爆炸发生他们一直在睡觉" or "他们一直在睡觉,直到爆炸发生" means they had been sleeping until the bombing, because it's unlikely they'll continue to sleep after the bombing. I have vivid memory of my conversation with my Indian friend who used the word "until" as if there were no change of state. I asked him and he quickly realized and corrected his sentence. I believe his native language is Hindi. A Dutch(?) lady made a similar mistake as I remember. I wonder how Hindi and Dutch fit in the above categories. Edited by yong321 on 25 November 2009 at 10:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6894 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 30 of 31 25 November 2009 at 11:32pm | IP Logged | ||
Ah, I hadn't thought of it when I wrote that, but in Mexican Spanish the "haber ...-do" forms are virtually never used. In theory they should have studied that form in school and be aware of it, or so I'm told, but if they never use it themselves they might disagree with me on the above, or they might just find the question confusing. There may be some other way of disambiguating those two cases in Mexican Spanish but I am not aware of it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| AlexL Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7084 days ago 197 posts - 277 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 31 of 31 26 November 2009 at 6:56am | IP Logged | ||
But "I didn't find it until now" sounds weird to me as well. Something about the "arrive" sentences above makes me question, though... "I didn't arrive until just now" sounds normal to me, and "I hadn't arrived until just now" sounds weird. I wouldn't put money on it though. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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