|
Edited on Fri Jul-15-11 04:44 PM by Igel
It's a reasonable kind of question. "Be" can mean a number of things.
Even harder to explain is that a tense-aspect form, completely grammatical in function, can mean a number of things.
"I'm going to the store" can be present tense or future tense, it can mean that you're going and returning or going and staying, it can mean that you're overdue for going to the store. It can be a one-off event or an iterative. Intonationa matters, of course, but even more important is context.
"Come help me with cleaning the car." "I'm going to the store." In the very near future, once, open ended as to whether you're returning.
"What are you doing next 3rd of July?" "I'm going to the store." Once, and probably returning, but not going to happen for nearly a year.
"I want you out. Don't come back. Here, take your sugar glider." "I'm going to the store." There's a storeroom with a cot, short term but not returning.
"So, you're unemployed. How do you kill time?" "I'm going to the store." Most days. Killing time. Usually followed by a list of other repeated activities.
"There's no problem with Social Security." To wit, right now.
"There's a problem with Social Security. We need to act now because in 15 years we'll have to ask the public T-bill market to start buying an additional $150 billion in debt securities." Well, the problem's really in 15 years (I'm sorry, "The problem will be in 15 years") but because there's some relevance to now it's still presence tense.
It takes a certain kind of Gricean non-cooperativeness to overlook native speaker competence. Politicians and lawyers elevate it to an art (so do a lot of PR folk). Most people have no problem with it but are fairly artless. The problem is that ignoring cooperativeness and abusing it is taken as lying (it's not: it's dishonest and manipulative, but not lying) or as ill will (on that score they're pretty much right, although disdain and disregard are often better terms for it).
|