The grammar of the english verb phrase part 67 potx

I. Temporal subordination in a past time-sphere domain 455
Although speaker B is clearly being uncooperative in his first response, he
cannot actually be said to contradict himself with his second response.
9.6.5 Parallel to the use of the present tense of be to for official arrangements
regarding the future (see 7.15), the past tense of be to can be used to refer to a
past official arrangement concerning the actualization of a posterior situation:
[There were a lot of plainclothes policemen in the hotel] where the conference was
to take place.
[In the afternoon the Princess left for New Zealand,] where she was to join her hus-
band.
9.6.6 Both would and was to can be used to represent a situation that is
posterior to a past orientation time as a past fact (rather than as something
that was expected at the past binding orientation time). That is, was to and
would can express that a situation which did not actualize before or at the
past binding orientation time did actualize later (but still in the past).
[In that year they moved to Heathfield,] where they {were to / would} spend the
most difficult years of their lives.
Ten years later, Percy {would / was to} be the most popular actor in London.
[Soon after that war ended,] another one {would / was to} begin.
[He entered Parliament at the age of 31.] Five years later he {would / was to} be
the youngest Prime Minister the country had ever had.
Neither form is common in this function in spoken English. Both are formal
and typical of narrative style.
2
The following are authentic examples:
[J. P., as he was fondly referred to by those who knew him well, first came to this
University as an instructor in pomology.] Later he was to be professor of plant
physiology and plant physiologist in the Agriculture Experiment Station. (www)
[Lorena Rosalee Encinas was born on September 4, 1922, in Nogales, Arizona. (…)]
Nearly two years later, she would have a little brother, named Louis Jesus, to whom
she would be completely devoted. She would protect him all her life, even at the

expense of her own freedom. (www)
Later he was to be famous and honoured through the Caribbean; he was to be a hero
of the people. [But when I first met him he was still a struggling masseur.] (www)
[It was not Harriet Jacob’s nature to give up without a fight.] Born into slavery,
Harriet Jacobs would thwart repeated sexual advancements made by her master for
years, then run away to the North. She would later publish an account of her an-
guished life in her autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. (www)
9.6.7 There is a special use of was to and was going to in conditional if-
clauses depending on a head clause in the past tense. The auxiliaries represent
2. This use of would is more common in Am. E. texts than in Br. E. ones.
456 9. Temporal subordination in the various time-zones
the possible posterior actualization of the if-clause situation as a goal envisaged
at some past orientation time. (See 7.11 for the description of a parallel use of
is to and is going to.)
I knew I had to work hard if I {was to / was going to} keep my job.
The conditional clause here refers to a goal envisaged at some past orientation
time. (In formal registers, was to is more likely than was going to and in
informal registers was going to is more likely than was to). The following are
some attested examples:
Tass news agency said Mr Aziz was told that if Iraq was to avoid the worst, it must
now openly declare and show by its actions that it was pulling out and freeing
hostages. (www)
[After making the decision to run she realized] there was a lot of work to do if she
was going to succeed at being elected the County Surveyor. (www)
Mr Lee said that if China was to play a role in South-East Asia it would have to
establish its business credibility. (www)
[She had nothing but the clothes on her back,] if she was going to make it in New
York, she was going to need every bit of Providence that came her way. (www)
[Mam was frail and George, who was now her main support, moved his house from
40 Plasterton Gardens in Cardiff to a bungalow in King George V Drive, overlooking

Heath Park, where he continues to live.] This was necessary if Mam was to continue
the active life, which was the only kind she knew. [The stairs of the old house
defeated her.] (www)
[The only problem was that they didn’t have the lightbulbs, the truck to take them
there or any of the other logistics required to make it happen] Ϫ and they needed
to leave in 48 hours if they were going to get there on time! (www)
Sir Bert said on Tuesday that there would have to be a ‘considerable improvement’
if England were to win the European Championship in a year’s time. (www)
9.6.8 From a tense-structural point of view, the past tense of futurish tense
forms discussed in 9.6.1Ϫ6 resembles the conditional tense in that it expresses
no temporal information other than that the bound situation time is T-poste-
rior to a binding orientation time forming part of a past domain (i. e. a domain
whose central orientation time is located in the past time-sphere Ϫ see 8.36).
(The fact that I was going to ring you and He was about to do something
stupid implicate nonactualization does not alter this: the speaker anyhow has
the time of (potential) actualization in mind, and this time (ϭ the situation
time of the situation denoted by the infinitive phrase) is posterior to the binding
orientation time in a past domain.) These forms expressing T-posteriority
therefore do not express the actual W-relation between its situation time and
t
0
. This W-relation can therefore be indicated by a time-specifying adverbial:
He told me (yesterday) that William {would / was going to} be there {later that
day / now / tomorrow}.
I. Temporal subordination in a past time-sphere domain 457
D. The T-relation expressed by the conditional perfect tense
9.7 The conditional perfect tense
In its purely temporal (nonmodal) use, the conditional perfect tense expresses
a
complex T-relation in a past domain: it represents its situation time as

anterior to an orientation time which is itself posterior to some orientation
time in a past domain.
Bill promised that he would have finished by the end of the day.
The finishing is interpreted as W-anterior to the end of the day, which is W-
posterior to the time when Bill made his promise. The conditional tense com-
bines anteriority and posteriority in one two-part T-relation: the finishing is
directly related to the promising, but by means of a complex T-relation. The
point where the T-relation ‘bends’ is the end of the day. See Figure 9.4.
Figure 9.4. The tense structure of Bill had promised that he would have finished (by
the end of the day).
The following are similar to the above example:
[I knew that I should try and see the manager at 4 p.m. at the latest, because] at 5
p.m. he would have left. (At 5 p.m. specifies the ‘bending point’ to which the manag-
er’s leaving is anterior.)
[I knew that the manager would no longer be available at 6 p.m. because] he would
have left at 5 p.m. (On the most plausible interpretation, at 5 p.m. specifies the
situation time, i. e. the time of the manager’s leaving.)
The manager would have left at 5 p.m. (ambiguous: at 5 p.m. may specify either
the situation time (ϭ ‘5 p.m. would be the time when he left’) or the orientation
458 9. Temporal subordination in the various time-zones
time to which the situation time is anterior (ϭ ‘At 5 p.m. the manager would already
have left’); in the later case the bending point is not made explicit in the sentence
but must be retrieved from the context.)
[You’ve hardly done anything since yesterday.] I thought you would have finished
by now. (www)
II. Temporal relations in a pre-present domain 459
II. Temporal relations in a pre-present domain
A pre-present domain can only be expanded if the pre-present situation can be re-
interpreted as if it were a past situation. In subclauses this will generally prove to be
impossible if the full situation of the head clause is interpreted as continuative and

unusual if the situation time is interpreted as recent (i. e. close to t
0
, as in the ‘hot news’
use of the indefinite perfect).
If a pre-present domain is expanded (by relative tenses), it is always expanded as if
it were a past domain. This means that we use the past perfect to express T-anteriority,
the relative past tense to express T-simultaneity and the conditional tense (or the past
tense of a ‘futurish form’ like be going to) to express T-posteriority.
9.8 The relevance of the W-interpretation of the
present perfect clause
9.8.1 A pre-present domain is a temporal domain that is established by a
present perfect tense form which locates its situation time in the pre-present
zone of the present time-sphere. This situation time functions as central orien-
tation time of the pre-present domain that is established. The pre-present zone,
which is one of the four absolute zones, is a period conceived of as starting
before t
0
and leading up to t
0
(without including t
0
). The period in question
may be an Adv-time (i. e. a period specified by a time-specifying adverbial like
since then) or an unspecified mentally conceived period. As we have seen in
5.2, the semantics of the present perfect is: ‘The situation time is located in the
pre-present’. However, the situation time can, according to context, be inter-
preted either as lying entirely before t
0
(in which case we get an ‘indefinite
perfect interpretation’, e. g. I have already met him) or as filling the entire pre-

present period (i. e. as leading up to t
0
). In the former case (i. e. when the
situation time lies entirely before t
0
), the full situation is interpreted as also
lying entirely before t
0
. In the latter case (i. e. when the situation time is co-
extensive with the pre-present) there are two possibilities as to the W-relation
between the situation time and the time of the full situation: (a) the two can
coincide, in which case they fill the entire pre-present but do not include t
0
(ϭ
the ‘up-to-now reading’, e. g. Where have you been?), or (b) the time of the
full situation may be interpreted as longer than the situation time, so that it
includes t
0
(ϭ the ‘continuative reading’, e. g. He’s known that for years).
There are thus three possibilities as to the W-location of the full situation
relative to t
0
. For convenience we transfer the names of these three readings of
460 9. Temporal subordination in the various time-zones
a sentence in the present perfect to the tense form itself and speak of the
‘indefinite perfect’, the ‘up-to-now perfect’ and the ‘continuative perfect’. How-
ever, it was stressed in 5.4.6 that these three labels actually refer to W-inter-
pretations (of clauses) which are not due to the perfect tense alone.
In sum, we distinguish between three temporal W-interpretations of present
perfect clauses, all of which fit in with the same tense structure, viz. ‘The pre-

present zone contains the situation time’. (‘Contain’ can mean either ‘include’
or ‘coincide with’ Ϫ see 2.16.2 and 2.21.1.) When the situation time is included
in the pre-present, it does not lead up to t
0
, and we get an indefinite interpreta-
tion. When the situation time is co-extensive with the pre-present, it does lead
up to t
0
(without including it) and we get either an up-to-now reading or a
continuative reading (depending on the nonverbal part of the clause or its
context). Because of the fundamental difference between these temporal inter-
pretations, the domains which they establish are not expanded in the same
way. It is therefore necessary to treat the readings separately.
9.8.2 The following are the general conclusions we will arrive at below:
(a) If a pre-present domain is expanded (by relative tenses), it is always ex-
panded as if it were a past domain. This means that we use the past perfect
to express T-anteriority, the relative past tense to express T-simultaneity
and the conditional tense (or the past tense of a ‘futurish form’ like be
going to) to express T-posteriority.
(b) A pre-present domain can only be expanded if the pre-present situation
can be re-interpreted as if it were a past situation. In subclauses this will
generally prove to be impossible if the full situation of the head clause is
interpreted as continuative and unusual if the situation time is interpreted
as recent (i. e. close to t
0
, as in the ‘hot news’ Ϫ see 5.14 Ϫ use of the
indefinite perfect).
9.9 T-relations in a domain established by an
indefinite perfect
A domain established by an indefinite perfect can be expanded if the situation referred

to is not recent, i. e. if the ‘bygone-ness’ of the situation is more salient than its closeness
to t
0
. When an indefinite perfect domain is expanded, it is treated exactly like a past
domain. Each situation time that is inserted into this ‘pseudo-past’ domain functions
as the central orientation time of a ‘pseudo-past subdomain’. For example: Have you
ever told anyone that you felt guilty when you had kissed Gordon? (Have told estab-
lishes a pre-present domain, which is treated as a pseudo-past domain. Felt expresses
II. Temporal relations in a pre-present domain 461
T-simultaneity with the situation time of have told and establishes a pseudo-past subdo-
main. Had kissed expresses T-anteriority in that subdomain.)
9.9.1 As noted in 4.7.3, an indefinite present perfect is normally only used to
introduce a ‘bygone’ situation into the discourse (i. e. to establish a domain in
the pre-present zone), not to go on speaking about it after this has happened.
In order to do that we normally switch to the past tense. When this switch
happens in a subclause, as in I have occasionally thought that I was going mad,
we notice a shift of perspective: the pre-present domain is expanded as if it
were a past domain. As a matter of fact, this is the only way in which a pre-
present domain can be expanded: the tenses used to expand a pre-present do-
main are always the same as are used to express T-relations in a past domain.
In other words, the central orientation time of an expanded pre-present domain
is treated as if it were the central orientation time of a past domain. This is
further illustrated by the following example:
On one occasion I’ve even drawn the curtains across a window through which a
journalist was peeping.
The present perfect in the head clause locates its situation time (which is taken
to be the time of the full situation Ϫ see 5.4.1) at some indefinite time within
the pre-present zone. (As is criterial of an indefinite perfect reading, the situa-
tion time is interpreted as lying completely before t
0

.) The relative clause intro-
duces another situation time into the pre-present domain, but in doing so cre-
ates a ‘pseudo-past subdomain’. In other words, there is a ‘shift of temporal
perspective’ (see 8.22): the pre-present domain is treated as if it were a past
one. This means that the tense used to express T-simultaneity in the relative
clause is the relative past tense. The tense structure of the above example can
therefore be represented as in Figure 9.5. (The vertical dashed line in this figure
represents the shift of temporal perspective; the dotted line indicates the
pseudo-past subdomain.)
9.9.2 It is very important to remember in any discussion about the expansion
of pre-present domains that a pre-present domain established by a present per-
fect does not always have to be expanded and in fact often cannot be Ϫ see
9.9.6 below. The only point made in 9.9.1, therefore, is that if a pre-present
domain is expanded, it is expanded as if it were a past domain.
9.9.3 The following are further examples illustrating the shift of temporal
perspective which takes place when an indefinite pre-present domain is ex-
panded. (As noted before, ‘indefinite pre-present domain’ is short for ‘pre-