Dropsafe

by Alec Muffett

Can someone please tell me which tense this is in?

Independent

Marilyn Monroe would have turned 80 on 1 June this year. It’s an anniversary that raises intriguing questions…

I’m having a bit of a Douglas Adams Tense Moment – not this sort of Douglas Adams Tense Moment, but more a Dr Dan Streetmentioner’s Time Traveller’s Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations moment.

The above describes a future event which won’t happen as if it were current or slightly in the past, and ascribes the ability to “raise questions” to a particular point in time.

In fact I suspect the author has a slight problem with tenses overall:

She had been born on one of the most promising days of any year, 1 June, with the whole summer laid out before her. It was 1 June, 1926 – the last full year of silent movies; a time when people were reading Mrs Dalloway and The Professor’s House by Willa Cather; it was the year when Louis Armstrong began his Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings.

Presumably if she had been born then, she should have shifted the date as if it was somehow changeable?

⊞

Comments

4 responses to “Can someone please tell me which tense this is in?”

  1. Mike Smith
    re: Can someone please tell me which tense this is in?

    I have consulted three reference books, and none of them has a simple label for this construction. The best description I can find is that the modal auxilliary verb ‘will’ is used in the past tense to ‘distance’ the language in order to talk about a future unreal situation.

    See for example, Swan M, Walter C; How English Works, OUP, Oxford 1997 p258 or Swan M; Practical English Usage, OUP, Oxford 1995, p520

    Reply
  2. Mike Smith
    re: Can someone please tell me which tense this is in?

    To add further confusion to my previous note, normally the future perfect form is used to describe events which will be in the past at some future time, e.g. I will have lived in this house for six years next Easter.

    The use of “would” (the past tense of the modal auxilliary) is the part which does the “distancing” to describe the “unreal situation”.

    Reply
  3. Chris Walsh
    re: Can someone please tell me which tense this is in?

    Looks like conditional past perfect to me.

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_tense is the only resource I consulted.

    @Mike: It seems nonsensical to say “would have lived” about someone you know absolutely will NOT have lived (since she is already dead). I suppose you could say something like:

    “Were Marilyn not dead, she would have turned 80 in two weeks”, but it seems incorrect to refer to a definite future time (‘in two weeks’) using the past tense.

    Disclaimer: As an American, my command of english may be debatable. :^)

    Reply
  4. elma25
    re: Can someone please tell me which tense this is in?

    Its the 2nd conditional. “What would have happened if…” refering to a future event but using the past form of will.

    Reply

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