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91
English / Re: He walked to the School-
« Last post by Rock100 on July 01, 2020, 03:30:10 AM »
>>> In English English "He walked to the school" means he got there – perhaps
>>> not right up to the front door, but definitely to a position in the street where
>>> if he stopped walking he would be standing just outside the school or its
>>> grounds, or if on the other side of the road would be opposite it.
>> So in your dialect, can you say "When I walked to school yesterday,
>> they blocked the main road with construction and I got lost going around
>> it, so I ended up at the zoo and decided to play hooky instead"?
> Yes, except we say "play truant", or more colloquially, "bunk off" instead
> of "play hooky".
Sorry, I am afraid you may not have both. You either get there or can say that you may disappear on your way and do not reach the place.

> but in "I walked to school" you are considering it primarily as an educational
> institution.
May you really say “walk to school” and mean an educational institution? I was dead sure that natives walk to a physical place only and “go to school” if they need to say they attend it. In other words, I have thought that you “go to (the) school” whether it is a concrete place or an institution but you can walk to a concrete place/school only. I.e. you cannot “walk to the School of Woodwork” you “go to the School of Woodwork” if you mean you attend it.

92
Linguist's Lounge / Features of Eglish from a certain point of view, contex and goal in mind
« Last post by waive15 on July 01, 2020, 03:18:07 AM »
Hi,

The "pros" and "cons" of something are its "advantages" and "disadvantages".
/it will be done in a relaxed way, so there will be mistakes/


I yam what I yam.
Popeye the Sailor


Native speakers don't notice some features of their "language" ("language" is a habit). Foreigners on the other hand are more critical/nitpicking.



"pro": English nouns have not grammatical gender. They lost their case endings (they have only one form, apart from genitive) - so: no endings - no gender! (very few exceptions) /look at the mess in German/

"pro": English pronouns - the same: Nom. form and the Other form (apart from genitive)

"con": One cannot say have not, read not, ...(in general) (which is normal in other languages) - don't/doesn't have, read ...  is a little bit too ... posh.

"pro/con": Prefixes which are prepositions are set/put after the verb where they belong. This makes verb short (which is good) but it is hard for the foreigners to decide if it is a Preposition or a Verb particle.
/This is extremely elegant. But I as a foreigner make the Verb particle a Prefix and then the phrasal verb sounds "normal" /like German, Russian, Latin, ... verbs// 

"pro/con": "What are you talking about?" The "normal" way would be "About what are you talking?" It is a simplification - if you have a question word (and a preposition) in a question - the question begins with the question word (and the preposition is at the end).

"pro": Perfect tenses use only HAVE (they are made regular!!!). /see German as a bad example/

"pro": Conditionals are simplified (due to simplified future, regular perfect tense and losing Subjunctive) /on the other side German is a way more punctual (with Subjunctive), Russian Conditionals are simplified but one cannot see the "logic"!!! (SO EVEN "RUSSIANS" cannot understand the "logic" of their own Conditionals (I prefer to leave that without comment)) /
...



P.S.
It will take time.
93
English / Re: He walked to the School-
« Last post by Daniel on July 01, 2020, 02:12:15 AM »
Quote
Some interesting examples get thrown up when you think things through!
Yes, and I admit my intuitions are getting a bit fuzzy from overthinking this.
Quote
I think the distinction is that in "I walked to the school" you are considering the school primarily as a location, but in "I walked to school" you are considering it primarily as an educational institution.
I didn't intend to emphasize that distinction. Yes, there is a distinction (referring to a place, versus a typical location for learning: "I walked to school" means "my school" approximately, where I study), but that's not relevant I don't think to the question of success/arrival here.
94
English / Re: He walked to the School-
« Last post by Forbes on July 01, 2020, 01:18:44 AM »
Quote from: panini on June 30, 2020, 08:14:29 AM
So in your dialect, can you say "When I walked to school yesterday, they blocked the main road with construction and I got lost going around it, so I ended up at the zoo and decided to play hooky instead"?

Yes, except we say "play truant", or more colloquially, "bunk off" instead of "play hooky".
95
English / Re: He walked to the School-
« Last post by Forbes on July 01, 2020, 01:11:44 AM »
Quote from: Daniel on June 30, 2020, 03:22:19 PM
It certainly has that default interpretation for me too, and if the attempt was not successful, then "I was walking to school" would probably be used. But I think "I walked to school" can be used in a similar way in casual speech when precision is not important and context clarifies the meaning. But you may be right that it "should" indicate success, whatever "should" means for language usage!

There's also a question about what "success" means here. For example, this seems natural to me: "This morning I woke up, then I walked to school, only to find that it had been teleported off the planet by aliens." Arguably I stilled arrived at the original location of the school, but it was gone. An interruption halfway there is less clear to me: "This morning I woke up, then I walked to school, only to realize that I had forgotten my backpack and had to return home". There the strong implication is that I actually arrived all the way at the school and had to walk all the way back, but probably in part because of context. Compare: "This morning I woke up, then I walked to school, but I got lost." That context clarifies that the attempt was definitely unsuccessful (unless further clarified that I then found my way again). But maybe that's because "walk to school" is a habitual action rather than a novel form? So what about "I walked to the new place, but I got lost on the way" -- that does sound strange, and "was walking" would be preferred, I think.

Some interesting examples get thrown up when you think things through! I think the distinction is that in "I walked to the school" you are considering the school primarily as a location, but in "I walked to school" you are considering it primarily as an educational institution.

Whilst not exactly the same, in English English we make a similar distinction between "in hospital" and "in the hospital". "In hospital" means you are an in-patient, whilst "in the hospital" means you just happen to be in the hospital building, including as an out-patient.
96
Language-specific analysis / Re: He lived in the US for 30 years
« Last post by Daniel on June 30, 2020, 08:58:09 PM »
No. It's simply stating a fact about 2017. It doesn't say anything else. In that context, the assumption would be that you care about 2017 for some specific reason (like a historical event). The present is irrelevant. Note that this is different from "He was president" without a specific contextually-relevant time. If you asked me "Say some facts about 2017" and I said "He was president", then it wouldn't have any implicature about the present either.
97
Language-specific analysis / Re: He lived in the US for 30 years
« Last post by mallu on June 30, 2020, 08:14:20 PM »
One similar  case too, D.Trump was the president of the US in 2017, The use of past tense doesn't  make the situation entirely in past, does it?
98
English / Re: He walked to the School-
« Last post by Daniel on June 30, 2020, 03:22:19 PM »
It certainly has that default interpretation for me too, and if the attempt was not successful, then "I was walking to school" would probably be used. But I think "I walked to school" can be used in a similar way in casual speech when precision is not important and context clarifies the meaning. But you may be right that it "should" indicate success, whatever "should" means for language usage!

There's also a question about what "success" means here. For example, this seems natural to me: "This morning I woke up, then I walked to school, only to find that it had been teleported off the planet by aliens." Arguably I stilled arrived at the original location of the school, but it was gone. An interruption halfway there is less clear to me: "This morning I woke up, then I walked to school, only to realize that I had forgotten my backpack and had to return home". There the strong implication is that I actually arrived all the way at the school and had to walk all the way back, but probably in part because of context. Compare: "This morning I woke up, then I walked to school, but I got lost." That context clarifies that the attempt was definitely unsuccessful (unless further clarified that I then found my way again). But maybe that's because "walk to school" is a habitual action rather than a novel form? So what about "I walked to the new place, but I got lost on the way" -- that does sound strange, and "was walking" would be preferred, I think.
99
Language-specific analysis / Re: He lived in the US for 30 years
« Last post by Daniel on June 30, 2020, 03:18:52 PM »
Yes, in contrast to "lives" or "has lived". It says nothing about the present, so why would it apply to the present? If I say "I ate an apple" does that mean I'm currently eating an apple? It doesn't state that I'm not, so we don't know, but you wouldn't assume I am. And therefore, with something over more general relevance to life, like living in a certain place, it would be unusual to say "lived" if it's still true today-- why not use the present? It's not like eating an apple where you might eat a different apple every day. We generally think of living as one general experience of life. You could say for example: "I lived here many years ago, then I went elsewhere, and now I'm back." But that's not the default assumption. Similar other usage would be things like "I was a vegetarian."
100
Language-specific analysis / He lived in the US for 30 years
« Last post by mallu on June 30, 2020, 12:13:31 PM »
Hi Everyone   pl.look at the sentence.  # He lived in the US for 30 years.Does the sentence  hav the implication that he doesn't  live in the U.S anymore? THANKS IN ADVAN
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