new life for a school rule
English translation: The "time sequence rule" does not apply here.
| 04:37 Dec 1, 2001 |
| English language (monolingual) [Non-PRO] Art/Literary | |||||||
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|  Selected response from: Fuad Yahya | ||||||
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Answers
1 hr confidence: 
He will tell me he had too much work. Explanation: I'd say "... he had too much work." since that would be his excuse for having an affair at that time. I found quite a lot of good English grammar books at www.amazon.com. I think you might like to check them out. Good luck and HTH. EFL teacher |
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1 hr confidence:
"he had too much work." Explanation: What this is is reported speech. It is a very strange thing in the English language, but any time you talk about something that someone said, you put it in the past. Native English speakers do this automatically, but when you think about it, it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. Examples: "I had too much food." He told me that he had had too much food. or "I have too much work" He said that he had too much work. or "I will go to school." She said that she would go to school. *****Just look in a good English grammar book under Reported Speech |
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4 hrs confidence: peer agreement (net): +2
peer agreement (net): +2The "time sequence rule" does not apply here. Explanation: The "time sequence rule" applies when the reporting phrase ("he said") is in the past tense. In that case, the content of the "reported speech" is regressed further into the past. Examples: Direct speech: He said, "I have too much work." Reported (indirect) speech: He said he had too much work. Direct speech: He said, "I had too much work." Reported speech: He said he had had too much work. In the example that you provided, however, the reporting phrase is in the future ("He will tell me"), so there is no time regression involved here. Therefore the direct and indirect forms will be the same. If the husband is referring to his coming home late that evening, then he will be using the past tense to begin with. He will say something like, "I had too much work." His wife, anticipating his statement, would say, "He will tell me he had too much work." Since there is no regression, the tense does not change to past perfect. Fuad |
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16 hrs confidence:
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