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Tangent - ordinarily I would consider it obnoxious to point this out, but I learned something and wanted to share it. As a native speaker, "the crash didn't com
by lordgrenville 7y ago
Tangent - ordinarily I would consider it obnoxious to point this out, but I learned something and wanted to share it. As a native speaker, "the crash didn't come" sounds wrong to me - it should be "the crash hasn't come", but it took me a while to figure out why. I think the idea is that since you are saying "yet", you need to use the present perfect ("has not come"), which can imply an indefinite time (it might happen at some point, but we're not sure when). The simple past tense, "did not come", would be if we were referring to a past set time when something was expected to happen but didn't. (This seems like a very subtle distinction that I would consider exasperating if I was learning a new language, but I take it for granted in English!)
- posterboy 7y agoThe flip-side is that a closed set of movement related words uses a different auxhiliary than the rest of the verbs, in German as well as e.g. French. However is gone, did go, has gone, was gone do not fit the pattern. Deriving the reason for the different helper verbs from first principles is endearing, in principle, but you've merely given names to it that you somehow take for granted. It makes sense to have cut wood, and it makes no sense to do come or have come, except for a potatoe plant which if it cometh will have a Keim or Keimblatt to be precise; I'm guessing here. German rather differentiates is and have in the perfective, "sie ist ge-kommen", "sie hat ge-sehen"; We don't say has come because we are intuited to think it is wrong. That is, you might as sell say the crisis is not ye(t)come.
- lordgrenville 7y agoSorry, I don't completely follow this Also it's unclear to me if the bulk of your post is referring to German or English.