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Linguist53111 Posted 9 years ago
Linguistics Studies

Present-Tense-Forms in The Past-Tense-Context (error).

Dear all,

I am currently working on my bachelor thesis in English. The topic is aspectual-class-preference among German students in progressive -ing forms and the whether the abroad experience in an English-speaking country has an influence on it. Nonetheless, during the error-analysis I have faced some difficulties.

In particular, my professor (not a native speaker) insists that the use of the present form want in (1) or starts in (2) is correct. However, I am pretty sure that this is not the case, since couldn´t (1) and didn´t work (2) indicate past tense. Above all, a friend of mine who is a native English speaker told me that the use of the present form is incorrect in this context. Unfortunately, I struggle to find the grammatical rule that prescribes the use of the past form in this case.

(1) She couldn´t help herself. She constantly wants to eat cake.
(2) Suddenly, she realized that the brakes didn´t work. Now she starts to panic.

If someone remembers the grammatical rule that prescribes the use of a present-tense-form, please communicate it to me. However, I am of course open to criticism in case the assumption depicted above is incorrect.

Best regards

  

Top answer

(1) She couldn´t help herself. She constantly wants to eat cake. The first sentence indicates the speaker is talking about the past.

— Clive

  • (1) She couldn´t help herself.
  • She constantly wants to eat cake.
  • The first sentence indicates the speaker is talking about the past.
  • The likely tense for sentence #2 is therefore Simple Past.
  • But I wouldn't say Simple Present is wrong.
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1 Answers
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(1) She couldn´t help herself. She constantly wants to eat cake.

The first sentence indicates the speaker is talking about the past. The likely tense for sentence #2 is therefore Simple Past. But I wouldn't say Simple Present is wrong. It indicates that she had a habit at that time of wanting to eat cake, and adds further information that the habit continues in the

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