i wish i can do...
chance
in the citation as follows?
http://www.ammado.com/company/ammado-asia-pacific/videos/2272
Robert Lieblich
It's either an error or a dialectal usage. In Standard English it
should read "I wish I *could* do."
I do not care to discuss this further.
--
Bob Lieblich
With great trepidation
Athel Cornish-Bowden
> chance wrote:
>>
>> What do yo mkae of 'I wish I can do...' repeated
>> in the citation as follows?
>>
>> http://www.ammado.com/company/ammado-asia-pacific/videos/2272
>
> It's either an error or a dialectal usage. In Standard English it
> should read "I wish I *could* do."
After listening to what the little girl says at the beginning of the
video (the only part I listened to), I'm pretty sure she says "could",
so it's probably an incompetent piece of labelling. The website appears
to be based in Ireland (though the first advertisement it offered me
was in Italian), but I don't think they'd use "can" like that in
Ireland.
--
athel
chance
"CDB" <belle...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message news:hem6im$n9c$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
> Richard Chambers wrote:
>> "chance" asked
>>
>>> What do yo mkae of 'I wish I can do...' repeated in the citation as
>>> follows?
>>>
>>> http://www.ammado.com/company/ammado-asia-pacific/videos/2272
>>
>> able to ...".
>
> What's interesting is that the girl's accent appears to be that of a
> native BrE speaker. Maybe she has picked up the idiom living abroad,
> or maybe the closeness of sound between "c'd do" and "c'n do" (I had
> to listen closely to some parts of the clip to be sure she was saying
> "c'n") is easing yet another step away from the British use of the
> subjunctive.
Whether it is limited to the British use of the subjunctive or not,
I wonder if there was'nt in the first place something wrong
with the parting of verb forms into the indicative, subjunctive
and imperative mood. The past form of a verb intrinsically denotes
an indirect way of expressing something, irrespective of its function
of the tense past. For example, 'would' in the modal usage
has nothing to do with the past in tense, albeit it denotes
an indirect way of speech, compared to the direct way of speech,
represented by 'will', if it were.
Have you ever recently watched by any chance
'Dibo' of Playhouse Disney?
DIbo invariably asks, 'What is your wish?'
Then, Annie, Crow, Bunny or Ello answers,
'I wish I can...' or something along the line,
more often than not.
Robert Lieblich
[ ... ]
> Whether it is limited to the British use of the subjunctive or not,
> I wonder if there was'nt in the first place something wrong
> with the parting of verb forms into the indicative, subjunctive
> and imperative mood.
If there was something wrong with the inflection of verbs to indicate
mood (to the extent that it ever did and still does), it wouldn't have
happened.
> The past form of a verb intrinsically denotes
> an indirect way of expressing something, irrespective of its function
> of the tense past.
I don't understand this, and I doubt that you do. The past tense
ordinarily indicates that an event occurred in the past. It may in
certain inflections be identical with other forms in other moods, but
then it isn't really the form of the past tense -- it indicates
something other than the past tense even though it has the same form
as the past tense. The "were" of "If I were king ..." is in the same
form as the plural past tense of "be," but it is the singular and
plural of the subjunctive, and it is not necessarily in the past tense
at all.
This is clearer in more inflected languages, in which there are many
cases when forms are identical but usages differ.
> For example, 'would' in the modal usage
> has nothing to do with the past in tense, albeit it denotes
> an indirect way of speech, compared to the direct way of speech,
> represented by 'will', if it were.
To the best of my knowlege, it has nothing to do with direct vs.
indirect. Again, this makes no sense to me.
> Have you ever recently watched by any chance
> 'Dibo' of Playhouse Disney?
No. Can't say I've missed it.
>
> DIbo invariably asks, 'What is your wish?'
> Then, Annie, Crow, Bunny or Ello answers,
> 'I wish I can...' or something along the line,
> more often than not.
I can't deny this, since I have never seen the show. But I have my
doubts.
--
Bob Lieblich
Doing his stretching exercises
chance
"Robert Lieblich" <r_s_li...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:4B0F5D50...@yahoo.com...
Remember when I have desisted from beating the dead horse.