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IV. The Use of the Present Indefinite

I. The Pronunciation | IV. Nouns Used only in the Plural | I. The Formation | V. Articles with Nouns in the Possessive Case | General Characteristic | IV. Verbs Not Used in the Continuous Forms. | V. The Present Continuous vs. The Present Indefinite. | V. The Present Perfect vs. The Past Indefinite | III. The Present Perfect Continuous vs. The Present Perfect | The Past Continuous Tense |


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1) The Present Indefinite is used to denote permanent actions and states:

2) The Present Indefinite is used to denote habitual and repeated actions.

3) The Present Indefinite is used to state laws of nature and general (universal) truths of the physical world, including the generalised folk wisdom expressed in proverbs and other statements made “for all time”:

4) The Present Indefinite can denote events simultaneous with the present moment and normally occurs in certain easily definable contexts.

a) The Present Indefinite is used with verbs that do not have continuous forms:

b) The Present Indefinite is preferred to the Present Continuous when the progress of the action is not uppermost in the mind of the speaker. It is the occurrence itself, the action as such that attracts the attention of the speaker and the idea of its progress becomes unimportant at the moment, but the attending circumstances (the time, the manner, the place);

c) The Present Indefinite is used to express declarations, announcements, etc. usually with the first person of performative verbs which perform the act named by actually being spoken, i.e. you do things by saying smth: when you promise to do smth, you say 'I promise...', when you advise to do smth., you say 'I advise...', etc. Common performative verbs are: accept, agree, apologize, congratulate, declare, deny, disagree, forbid, forgive, guarantee, insist, invite, order, predict, promise, recommend, refuse, thank, warn, etc.

d) In sports commentaries:

5) The Present Indefinite can be used instead of the imperative to give instructions (often with the impersonal you). The imperative in such sentences sounds more abrupt.

6) It is used, chiefly, with the verb 'say'(advise/warn), when we are asking about or quoting from books, notices or very recently received letters

7) In stage directions:

8) The Present Indefinite is also found in exclamatory, interrogative and negative-interrogative sentences.

9) Note the structures here comes... and there goes...:

10) Some fixed phrases that are used in letter-writing can be expressed either in the Present Indefinite (more formal) or in the Present Continuous (less formal).

 

The Present Indefinite is used to denote future actions

1) In subordinate clauses of time, condition and concession after the conjunctions w hen, while, till, until, before, after, as soon as, as long as, once (time), if, unless, on condition (that), provided, in case (condition), e ven if, even though, no matter how, whenever, whatever, however (concession), etc.;

 

Note 1: In object clause after 'to see' (in the meaning of 'to understand'), 'to take care' and 'to make sure' the Present Indefinite is used to speak about future actions.

 

Note 2: The conjunctions 'if' and 'when' can introduce object clauses, then any future tense according to the sense is possible.

 

2) The Present Indefinite may be used to indicate a future action which is certain to take place according to a timetable, program, schedule, command or arrangement worked out for a person officially (a plan or arrangement regarded as unalterable). In this case the sentence usually contains an indication of the future time.

3) The use of the Present Indefinite with reference to the immediate future is structurally dependent in some special questions. In such questions one asks after the will of the person addressed. Thus the tense has a modal colouring.

4) In suggestions with Why don’t you...?

5) In descriptions of travel arrangements:

 

The Present Indefinite is used to denote past actions:

1) In newspaper headlines, cartoons captions, chapter headings (perhaps because of its brevity and dramatic vividness):

2) In an informal style to describe a succession of past events (the historic present). Past events are portrayed or imagined as if they were going on at the present time, so we give the description greater reality. Mind that in such stories the present continuous is used for “background” – things that are already happening when the story starts, or that continue through the story.

3) The Present Indefinite is common in summaries of plays, stories, etc.

4) More commonly, we report past events when using verbs of communication in the present to imply that what was said or heard still applies (often with the meaning of the Present Perfect) in the expressions I forget, I hear, I am told, I learn, I see, I understand. The Present Indefinite is used with a perfect or past meaning in introductory expressions like I hear, I see, I understand, I gather, etc.

 


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