Posts by mark taslov
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sorry, I'll stop highjacking the thread. Obviously I'm strongly in favour of 'Filament'.
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ah ha! New headline today...
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/2502716/Soldiers-involved-in-pub-brawl
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<applause>
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"ENSOC"
Yeah that sounds about right, if you do hear on the grapevine who the factions prepared to raise that kind of hell were, I'd be keen to know.
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's moves.
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Liking the Flavor's in that one.
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Enjoyed this article the other day, thought it might have been your lot versus the kiwiblog posse Emma.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/2492257/All-hell-broke-loose-at-Chch-pub
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Bollocks.
exactly
because the transcript is wrong.
he didn't say
"I came home and they're all dead"
he said
"I came home and they were all dead"
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/quote>@mark: don't we usually talk about being dead as a continuous state.
I think people avoid any sentence construction that uses "were dead" because it raises the question "what are they now?</quote>
Yes, sorry Ben, I wasn't clear. technically in all cases we describe being dead in the simple present, i.e. referring to facts, regular action and also tellingly; scheduled future events
1. I am gay
2. I play football
3. you're plane leaves tomorrow 6pm.In this case the clause is confused in that 'be' is a non continuous verb necessitating the possible attribution of continuous meanings to a simple present useage. So ultimately I may have taken things a little far in ascribing a continuous sense to the tense..
but the issue is not the the first;
Bain: They're all dead
nor the second;
Bain: They're all dead.
but the connected;
I came home and they're all dead.
@ Steve
"I came home and they were dead" is a contraction of
"when I came home, they were dead"but even that is a large step to make, why not
"I came home and then they were all dead"?
Basically, does "when I came home, they were dead"mean
"when I came home they were already dead"
or
"when i came home they were ready to be dead"?
Drawing on the 'future scheduled even't use of simple present tense,(based on the inconclusiveness of his 'they're)ie
"When I get home, you're dead bucko!"
Also considering it's not clear whether he used simple present or simple past, we're left with a whole swathe of possible meanings;
1 I came home and they were all already dead
2 I came home and they are all dead now
3 I came home and they were all dying
4 I came home and they are dying
and most likely as intended and as you state Steve
5 I came home, and i saw "they are all dead!"
compared to
1 i came home and the phone rang
2 I came home and the phone was ringing
3 I came home and the phone rings* (used)
4 I came home and the phone is ringing
Essentially, a boredom killer.
as Cecelia said;
His syntax was mildly confused when he spoke after the trial too. The words don't come out the right way for some of us when we're put on the spot.
adult with a paper run speaks volumes.
I'm very much on the same page as you Steve with
A last ditch attempt to justify the the whole sorry episode?
I am not going to go either way in terms of Bains guilt or innocence, I'll leave that to the jury who spent a considerable amount of time listening to both sides of the argument.
However, if Bain were the culprit he has already done 13 years and "paid his debt to society" and is unlikely to kill his family again.I'll admit I laughed at that last quote, black as it is.
I'm interested by what you're saying Carol, and am going to find out more, the coverage of this trial has been the most extensive that I can recall, but I hadn't thought much around that.
I would be asserting, that there would be no need to tell the emergency services about having arrived home, just that there was a problem with dead people needing urgent remedying.
Nicely put Stephen.
Russell, Leo sounds like the man, must be cool having in house experts.
<quote>And now I hear it too, which is actually something of a relief.</relief>
I definitely feel more peace of mind assuming the jury got it right, and it pains me a great deal to even touch on the possibility that Joe Karam could be the anti-christ.
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Having worked as a transcriber for a number of years in the linguistics department at some university, I can understand why that was inadmissable. What I find far more interesting is Mr Bain's use of the present progressive tense (with non-continuous verb), in his initial description of events, namely;
"I came home and they're all dead."
As we know the progressive tense has 4 main uses;
1 the short term now "i am typing"
2 the long term now "i am living in Timbuktoo"
3 future plan "i'm watching a movie tonight"
4 complaint with 'always' or 'constantly' "why are you always wanking?"now the useage in this case would obviously be the first. 'i came home and they are all dead now/ i came home and now they are all dead'
His use of this over the more instinctive past simple
"i came home and they were all dead"
is either
a) a subconscious confession
b) fearing that he would tremor on the 'w' he chose it consciously supposing people would assume people make these kinds of temporal grammar errors in times of extreme shock
or
c) an honest to goodness grammar blunder.