Is it of much use?

[Jules Levin]

Is it just me, or are things becoming more complicated? AM

More complicated than anyone seems to think so far.
First, English.  The system that has been described here is rather 
formal and does not reflect spoken English
in either North America or UK.  For decades I have been collecting 
examples of the actual spoken future tense in English.  The most common 
future form is "I'm gonna read..."  It is at least potentially 
contrasted with the less common--and shrinking "I'll read..."  Re the 
difference, compare "She's gonna have a baby."--She is pregnant--and 
"She'll have a baby..." (Just to please her mother...)  There are other 
clear examples.  Before my English colleagues insist this is American, 
they should goggle "gonna" only from .uk sources.  I first noticed this 
whole phenomenon reading the Sunday Times while studying in Norway in 
1963.  I could go on at length; in fact I have a lecture ready to go:  
"Going, gonna, gone--the disappearing "will" future in English."  Nor 
does this form gonna have the despised status of "ain't".  I have 
examples of its use in otherwise high style prose.  Take a yellow pad, 
make columns for "gonna", "will", "'ll", "going to", and turn on the 
TV--news, commentary, drama, etc., and start checking off every future 
you hear.  You will be astounded.

As for Russian, has anyone mentioned the implied perfect of simple 
unprefixed verbs in the past tense, e.g.,
[Sorry about the Latin--too much in a hurry to get this out to paste in 
Cyrillic] Ty chital Voinu i Mir?
Da, chital.  The speaker wants to know if you read the novel.  The 
response states that you read the novel.  Not that you read "in it", or 
some of it, or started it...  If in fact you never finished it, you are 
sorta fibbing...
There are many more examples possible.  (I expect to be dumped on by 
some native speakers...so be it--bloody but unbowed...)
Best to my colleagues,
Jules Levin
Los Angeles



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