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Believer Posted 19 years ago
Grammar

one more question on subjunctive

0Hi,02br
02br
00I was looking at the us.geocities.com website for its excellent help on subjunctive and have a question in regard to one set of sentences I found in the section called "The Past Tense."02br
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001. 01u00Peter02u00 said, "01u00I02u01i01font00 lost02font02i00 01u00my02u00 keys in the train 01font00yesterday02font00"02br
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01u00Peter02u00 said that 01u00he02u01font00 01i00had lost02i02font00 01u00his02u00 keys in the train 01font00the day before02font00. 02br
02br
00My question is "When you rewrite 'yesterday' into 'the day before', aren't you losing the time reference that was clearly existed with the word 'yesterday' and making murky the whole intent to trying to best duplicate the speech rendered?" 0-
  

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7 Answers
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0How would you solve that problem?0-
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0 You're not losing anything, to my mind. Accept they mean the same. 0-
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0 Hi Believer,02br
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00Imagine today is Friday, you are listening to messages on your answering machine and if any are for your flatmate you have to make note of them:02br
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00Monday, 10:30 am:- "01i00Hi, it's John. I left my keys on the train yesterday and am hoping you might have a spare copy. Call me!02i00".02br
02
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0 Hi,02br
01b00Marius went to Montreal the day before. 02b02br
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00Do you understand that sentence? No, you can't. You are now thinking: "The day before what?"02br
00That means that everytime you say "the day before", it has to be clear what day it is, otherwise no one would understand you. So when you say "the day before" you are not
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0 You're not reading everything. 02br
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00 It's very clear: 02br
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00 The day before the day when he did the saying. 01u00(Peter02u00 said ...)0-
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0 01blockquote
01cite10Believer12cite10Hi,12br
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10I was looking at the us.geocities.com website for its excellent help on subjunctive and have a question in regard to one set of sentences I found in the section called "The Past Tense."12br
12br
101. 11u10Peter12u10 said, "11u1
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0 Sorry. Let me make a correction. It should be "its excellent help on 01u00reported speech02u00," not on subjunctive and I found the section called "The Past Tense" in its help on 01u00reported speech02u00. 0-

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