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Past vs Present participle logic | ||
Tags: Verbs/Conjugation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| stelingo Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5833 days ago 722 posts - 1076 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Mandarin | Message 9 of 20 20 August 2012 at 1:35am | IP Logged | |||||
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In my opinion I continue seated is not correct English. I remain seated is fine.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4950 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 10 of 20 20 August 2012 at 3:23am | IP Logged | |||||
Intuition is bad news when trying to use correct grammar in a non-native language. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5227 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 11 of 20 20 August 2012 at 12:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Intuition develops over time. It naturally takes longer in non-native languages due to comparatively lesser exposure and hints remaining not-so-clear, but it does nonetheless.
However, I thought you were a native speaker of both Spanish AND English, so in your case it shouldn't really matter. Edited by mrwarper on 20 August 2012 at 12:55pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5131 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 12 of 20 20 August 2012 at 4:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
And yet we rely on it all the time in our native language, particularly when we've not studied our own grammar. Your initial post in the thread sort of demonstrates that - you knew something didn't sound right, but couldn't explain why. Even after having studied grammar, we rely on it. It's not bad news, just one more tool in our chest. R. == 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4950 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 13 of 20 20 August 2012 at 8:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think I'm being misunderstood.
I didn't say anywhere intuition itself was bad. It is "bad" when you are trying to understand grammatically a foreign language concept, for the first time. I think the goal of ALL of us here is to one day have that full intuation in our TL. I already have an incipient intuition in both French and German for many things that a year ago I would have not had any clue for (modal particles and dative verbs in German, when to use an adverb vs adverbial locution, or when to use stress pronouns/phrases in French). Ironically though, even though no one really could give me an answer to this question (though people like Emk certainly did a good gob at trying), that in itself is my answer. There is no way or predicting how a language uses a present, past, or even infinitive in these situations. It has to be learned phrase by phrase by phrase. There is no grammatical logic behind it. Edited by outcast on 20 August 2012 at 8:16pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5131 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 14 of 20 20 August 2012 at 8:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
Of course there's logic behind it. If there were no logic behind it, we wouldn't have grammar as we know it to describe how we speak. Certainly languages may have exceptions to the general rules, but grammar was invented and is there to logically describe how the language is constructed. R. == 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5454 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 15 of 20 20 August 2012 at 9:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't know, but it may have something to do with the lexical aspect of the verb used, whether it is a perfective
verb (e.g. dormirse) or imperfective verb (e.g. dormir). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Heriotza Groupie Dominican Republic Joined 4681 days ago 48 posts - 71 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 16 of 20 20 August 2012 at 11:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
At least in Spanish, there are explanations for this. Out of your examples, the only really grammatically odd sentence, because it is semantically confusing, is "Sigo aprendido". Because you can't "aprenderte a ti mismo", so it must be "sigo aprendido por alguien más". But this is still semantically weird, to say the least. However, if you say: 'Esa lección sigue aprendida (por mí)', it could probably not be the most elegant choice of word, but it is still a grammatically correct sentence. 'Sigo comido' is possible, but it needs a complement, as in this example: "Dile que siento no llegar al doble -añadió el poeta, devolviendo el cofrecito a su sitio-, porque sigo comido de deudas" Arturo Pérez Reverte, 'El caballero del jubón amarillo'. 'Sigo sentando' is also possible, but again, it needs a complement: "Por favor, termina el trabajo en la cocina, mientras yo sigo sentando a los invitados". So, when the present and when the past are used in this situation? I would say: the present participle is used when describing an ongoing action. The past is used when describing a state. "Sigo sentado" is a state of someone, whereas "sigo sentando (a alguien") is an ongoing action exerted upon a subject. I'm afraid I could be simplifying matters here, but I just wanted to point out that, of course, there is explanations for this and the problem is really lack of context rather than grammatically unexplainable sentences. Edited by Heriotza on 20 August 2012 at 11:01pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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