[Ads-l] Spam semantics; English tense

[Jonathan Lighter]

I too have noticed.

Also some waning of past perfect in favor of simple past.

JL

On Tue, Aug 30, 2016 at 2:31 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> "You will receive one final email to confirm that we unsubscribed you."
>
> Really, y'all? Why not confirm it simply by not sending me any more e-mail?
>
>
> That this sentence does not read,
>
> "You will receive one final email to confirm that we _HAVE_ unsubscribed
> you
> "
>
> signals a paradigm shift <har! har!> in the manner of indicating tense,
> "seemlike t'me." There is no longer any overt indication that signals that
> an action that became true in the past continues to be true in the present.
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org