The grammar of the english verb phrase part 49 ppsx

6.5 The present perfect vs the preterite in when-questions 329
6.5.4 In the previous section we have seen that if the speaker of a when-
question is asking about the time of actualization of a bygone situation, the
fact of actualization of the situation is taken for granted, and it is the past
tense that is used:
When {did you mislay /*have you mislaid} all the butter that I bought yesterday?
However, there are cases in which a when-question asks the addressee to supply
an occasion or occasions on which a situation has actualized, rather than ask-
ing for the temporal location of the actualization of a situation (which is thus
presupposed to have actualized). In these cases, the present perfect (with
number-quantifying constitution interpretation) can be used. Typically, such
when-questions are rhetorical and are used to imply that no occasion of actual-
ization of the situation referred to exists. For example:
[Sixty-seven minutes Ϫ hell’s bells.] When have I ever spent more than an hour in
front of one picture in a gallery?
[You wouldn’t think it was so much to ask after all this time, would you Alfred?]
When have I asked anything from him? (www)
[Batman has everything known to man inside his utility belt.] When has he ever been
in a situation where his utility belt was not able to save him? (www)
Such when-questions in the present perfect can be used to challenge an explicit
or implicit assumption on the part of the addressee or someone else (including
the speaker). Thus the speakers of the following challenge the implicit assump-
tion that they would possibly lie:
[“Ask me a question and I’ll answer it; it’s as simple as that.” Ϫ “But I won’t know
if you’re telling the truth.”] Ϫ “And when have I lied to you?” (www)
[“You snapped up the cutest guy in school before the rest of us even saw him!”
Jean blushed. “Really?” Ororo rolled her eyes.] “When have I ever lied to you?” Ϫ
[“Never.” Ϫ “There, then.”] (www)
The message is: ‘Your suspicion implies that it’s possible that I would lie to
you, but that belief is unreasonable since you have no experience of my having
lied on past occasions.’ Similarly, the speaker of

[Whew! I ain’t seen this stuff before, either, so I take no responsibility for what it
says] (but then when have I ever taken responsibility for anything?). (www)
rejects the implication of his own utterance: normally refusing to do something
implies that it is possible in theory that one would or could do that thing. The
speaker rejects this implication of ‘I could take responsibility for what it says’
by pointing out that there is no evidence that such responsibility-taking has
ever occurred, so it is not reasonable to assume that there was ever a chance
that he would take responsibility.
330 6. The present perfect
vs
the preterite in clauses without temporal adverbials
[“Can I go over to the island?” Ϫ “You don’t need my permission to go over to the
island.] When have I ever stopped you?” (adapted from www)
The past tense too can sometimes be found in such examples:
[“But mum … I’m not lying! She’s the one that’s lying!” Ϫ “Just go to bed, won’t
you? I’m too angry to deal with you.” Ϫ “You’re an idiot!] When did I ever lie to
you!” (www)
[I have problems managing stress, that’s true, but] when did I ever ask him to handle
my problems? (www)
[Sixty-seven minutes Ϫ hell’s bells.] When did I ever spend more than an hour in
front of one picture in a gallery? [Previous personal best was probably 0.6 minutes
in front of a Vermeer in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam during Euro 2000.] (www)
(Despite the follow-up to the question, the question should still be taken to mean
‘I’ve never spent more than an hour in front of one picture’, because the follow-up
does not so much answer the question as back up the assertion ‘I’ve never spent
long in front of one picture’.)
It should be noted, finally, that, although the speaker of these when-questions
(in the present perfect or past tense) clearly believes in each case that the answer
to the question is ‘never’, the utterance is still not equivalent to an assertion
that the situation referred to has never taken place. Thus it is not impossible

for the question to be treated by the hearer and/or the speaker as (to some
extent, at least) a genuine challenge to cite instances of actualizations of the
situation referred to:
[“Do you believe John Kerry voted for this war?” Ϫ “Yes I do.”] Ϫ “When has he
ever said he voted for the war? [Tell me the interview. I want to look it up.” Ϫ “I
don’t know exactly Ϫ well, go to gop.com. There’s about Ϫ there’s 11 minutes of
different interviews.” Ϫ “He never says he voted for the war.” Ϫ “Well, I’m not
saying in that interview, but I’m saying in some.” Ϫ “Which one?” Ϫ “Oh, I don’t
know. I don’t have that in front of me.” Ϫ “OK. I don’t think he ever said it. But
anyway, we’ll look … I will continue my search …”] (www)
[“He has never ever said that he wanted to cut pensions or cut child benefit or cut
the benefits that go to disabled people. He has never said that.” Ϫ “He did actually,
according to this quote.”] Ϫ “When did he ever say that he was going to cut bene-
fits?” Ϫ [“It has been pointed out to me that in Newsweek of 7 October 1996 he
said ‘Our priorities should be to re-order public spending so that we are spending
less on welfare and more on areas like education.’”] (www)
6.6 Summary
6.6.1 In order to locate a situation time entirely before t
0
, the speaker has the
choice, as far as time reference is concerned, between a past tense form and an
indefinite present perfect. The present perfect is used when the speaker is con-
6.6 Summary 331
cerned with the relevance of the bygone situation to the present. As we have
seen in chapter 4, the past tense is used when there is focus on the actualization
of the bygone situation itself. (That is, focus on the actualization as a whole
or on some aspect of it, such as when or how the situation took place).
The indefinite present perfect is used to introduce a bygone situation that is
relevant to the present, but once a situation can be treated as ‘given’ in the
discourse, reference to it involves actualization focus, and it is the past tense

that is used. For example, I’ve just seen Meg. She was washing an elephant.
Sometimes a situation can be treated as given because it is implied by the
(linguistic or extralinguistic) context, rather than because it has been explicitly
introduced. Here, too, the present perfect is not appropriate. For example, in
How did you get that scar on your cheek? the existence of the scar is presup-
posed, which means, given our world knowledge, that we can assume that the
hearer got the scar at some time in the past. The actualization of a bygone
situation of getting the scar is ‘given’, and the present perfect cannot be substi-
tuted for the past tense.
6.6.2 In most wh-questions, the speaker has the choice, in principle, between
using the past tense and using the present perfect, depending on whether the
focus is on THEN or NOW. For example, in the first example below, the
speaker focuses on the past activity of putting the butter somewhere; he may
not even want to know where it is now. In the second example the focus is on
the present Ϫ the same activity is the subject of the question, but the speaker
is looking for a response that will tell him where the butter is now.
Where did you put the butter?
Where have you put the butter?
6.6.3 However, one sort of wh-question, namely when-questions, is more re-
stricted. If the speaker of a when-question is asking about the time of actualiza-
tion of a bygone situation, the fact of actualization of the situation is taken for
granted, and it is the past tense that is used:
When {did you mislay /*have you mislaid} all the butter that I bought yesterday?
However, there are cases in which a when-question asks the addressee to supply
an occasion or occasions on which a situation has actualized, rather than ask-
ing for the temporal location of the actualization of a situation (which is thus
presupposed to have actualized). In these cases, the present perfect may be
used, but with a number-quantifying constitution meaning rather than with an
indefinite one.
[What makes you happy? In looking over your life, where and] when have you been

the happiest? [Where were you, and what were you doing?] (www)
When have you successfully executed a project within a tight time-frame and with
a limited budget?
332 6. The present perfect
vs
the preterite in clauses without temporal adverbials
The past tense can often be used in such examples, too, but not when it is
unacceptable to presuppose the actualization of a specific instance or specific
instances of the sort of situation referred to. For example, in a discussion of
the use of experts in general (and not of any particular expert), we find:
[Another area to explore is the expert’s past history as a witness.] Where and when
has she testified, and how often? [Has it been more for plaintiffs or the defence? (…)
Has he ever served the opponent before, or been represented by that firm?] (www)
To substitute the past tense here, as in:
Another area to explore is the expert’s past history as a witness. Where and when
did she testify, and how often?
would be to presuppose that the situation of the expert testifying has actualized
at some time in the past. This would significantly change the interpretation of
the sentence, since Where and when has she testified? leaves open the possibility
that the witness in question has actually never testified before. (This is inherent
in the meaning of an indefinite perfect.) The presupposition (inherent in the
past tense) that she has done so is not easily acceptable, since the NP ‘the
expert’ is a generic NP, which refers to witnesses in general. In the world as
we know it, many people that are called as witness have never been in the
witness box before. The presupposition accompanying the past tense thus runs
counter to our pragmatic knowledge of the world.
6.6.4 When-questions with a number-quantifying constitution perfect are
often rhetorical and are used to imply that no occasion of actualization of the
situation referred to exists. For example:
[Sixty-seven minutes Ϫ hell’s bells.] When have I ever spent more than an hour in

front of one picture in a gallery?
Such when-questions in the present perfect can be used to challenge an explicit
or implicit assumption on the part of the addressee or someone else (including
the speaker). Thus the speaker of the following challenges the implicit assump-
tion that he would possibly lie:
[“Ask me a question and I’ll answer it; it’s as simple as that.” Ϫ “But I won’t know
if you’re telling the truth.”] Ϫ “And when have I lied to you?”
The message is: ‘Your suspicion implies that it’s possible that I would lie to
you, but that belief is unreasonable since you have no experience of my having
lied on past occasions.’ Similarly, the speaker of
[Whew! I ain’t seen this stuff before, either, so I take no responsibility for what it
says] (but then when have I ever taken responsibility for anything?). (www)
rejects the implication of his own utterance: normally refusing to do something
implies that it is possible in theory that one would or could do that thing. The
6.6 Summary 333
speaker rejects this implication of ‘I can take responsibility for what it says’ by
pointing out that there is no evidence that such responsibility-taking has ever
occurred, so it is not reasonable to assume that there was ever a chance that
he would take responsibility.

7. Absolute tense forms referring to
the post-present
I. ‘Future tense’ forms
vs
‘futurish’ forms 337
7.1 Definition of ‘future tense’ 337
7.2 Dual time conceptualization in sentences referring to the post-present 338
7.3 ‘Futurish’ tense forms 338
7.4 Modal implication: not-yet-factual-at-t
0

340
7.5 The distribution of shall and will in the future tense 340
7.6 The various meanings of shall and will 341
7.7 The progressive future tense (without progressive meaning) 344
II. Remarks on
be going to
345
7.8 ‘Be going to ϩ infinitive’: futurish form or future tense form 345
7.9 ‘Be going to ϩ infinitive’ as futurish form: general meaning 346
7.10 Be going to expressing a present intention 346
7.11 Be going to expressing present predictability of a post-present
actualization 350
7.12 A special use of be going to in if-clauses 352
7.13 Constraints on the use of be going to 352
III. Futurish forms other than
be going to
356
7.14 Be about to and be on the point of 356
7.15 The auxiliary be to 356
7.16 The present tense 357
IV. Summary 358