Re: Using past tense to refer to the future
- From: "Alan Jones" <atj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2008 17:18:08 +0100
"datere" <ee123456etw@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:76e04a9d-5cca-4fbd-bf7c-542aa3045b84@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hello, everyone. I saw a sentence in my grammar book:
It will be a great thing for future generations to know that I *laid
down my life here (I think it means "die in the battlefield") for the
country.
What confuses me is: the main clause uses future tense, but in the
"that-clause", "I laid down my life here" is a past tense. Since he is
not dead while he speaks, why can it use past tense here?
Although the book says "we can use past tense to refer to something
that may happen in the future", I've never seen this kind of grammar
before. Could you tell me if that Is ture? Thank you for your help!
Your death will be in the past from the point of view of future generations.
In many of these tense problems, "point of view" may be more important than
absolute time sequence.
Alan Jones
.
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- Using past tense to refer to the future
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