|
||||
04-06-2010, 02:38 PM
I am not specialist on this but i would describe it as this:
example: Maria came to see me, but I was gone. I believe that "I was gone" is passive voice of simple past tense see this page: Learn English - Passive Voice we can look at it as association of status/condition, so my status when Maria came to see me, was "gone", i know it is a verb as word, but look at it as my condition, so rather as adjective associated with me. example: Maria came to see me, but I had gone. this is past perfect tense so this time look at it as on full verb construct consisting of inseparable components of "had" and "gone", which together makes a single verb of specific tense. And this verb expresses my activity in past... which is i have got to other place even before when Maria came to see me. what is better to use? I believe (although i might be wrong), both ways have same meaning in result, but first is focused on expressing someone's status which would anyway be a result of such activity which expresses a second example so the second one is focused on describing of activity which happened before the first part of sentence (or the context generally). |
|
||||
04-07-2010, 08:04 AM
It wasn't a typo as such, more a mistake of typing my dialect rather than the correct way of writing it. (i sometimes do this by mistake).
That's how i would say it if i spoke about it. But should have wrote 'gone'. See, this is where languages get confusing for people. Even i made errors because the way i write and the way i speak are often quite different. |
|
||||
04-08-2010, 09:41 PM
Ok.. I think I have understood!! (is this the right tense or should I say "I think I understood"?)
Just one more thing: in the first post I wrote " 'I was gone' sounds to me"...but when a native speaks, does he says "sounds to me" or "sounds me" or both? (And to flounder in this Dirac sea is sweet to me.) Leopardi feat Paul Dirac |
|
||||
04-08-2010, 10:04 PM
Quote:
Quote:
Unfortunately for you, she is not here. "Ride for ruin, and the world ended!" |
|
||||
04-09-2010, 06:02 AM
"who has went" would be a dialect form that a small number of English speakers from particular regions use. It's not standard and to most English speakers sounds like an error.
I don't think you need to worry about this too much- I honestly can't think of very many situations where I would use "I was gone"- about the only one would be to mean "I had left", but even then I probably wouldn't use it. Even "I had gone" is not used that often by most people. "I had been" would be much more common. We are more likely to use "gone" when talking about other people, since it means leave and not come back. |
Thread Tools | |
|
|