"Du kunne/kan..." Det å bruke preteritum om framtida

[Zeph]

Er det riktig å bruka preteritumsforma av eit ord for å beskrive noko som skal gjerast i framtida?

 

Døme:

Person A skal montere eit møbel og person B ser på.

 

A: Korleis skal eg gjere dette?

 

B: Du kunne sett i monteringsrettleiinga.

eller

B: Du kan sjå i monteringsrettleiinga.

 

Eg ser dette ofte på engelsk òg: "You could try removing X to see if that had any impact on Y".

 

Er det likegyldig kva form ein brukar?

[ozone]

Det brukes slik mest som en høfligere form. "Kan" oppfattes mer direkte og selvsikker enn "kunne", som blir mer en anbefaling, og at man impliserer at man ikke er helt sikker på om det er den riktige tingen å gjøre.

[Slåttekar]

''- Jeg har i dag hatt den lykke å bli forlovet.

 

- Ei ei! - jeg gratulerer, ropte den annen muntert, jeg tror ennogså, jeg kan gjette med hvem - ; han vilde gjettet på madam Rasmussen.''

 

 

Jeg selv kunde også fundere på om vilde gjettet i det ovenforstående innebærer at den annen faktiskt uttrykte muntlig sin anelse, eller - at om han skulde ville ha sagt det høyt, da vilde han peke på madam Rasmussen.

Endret 7. september 2017 av Slåttekar

[1Dr.E]

Den dagen tidsreiser blir mulig har man en utfordring

 

Edit: Beklager avsporing, men dette får meg til å flire hver gang bøying av verb kommer opp

Endret 7. september 2017 av 1Dr.E

[1Dr.E]

“One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem in becoming your own father or mother that a broad-minded and well-adjusted family can't cope with. There is no problem with changing the course of history—the course of history does not change because it all fits together like a jigsaw. All the important changes have happened before the things they were supposed to change and it all sorts itself out in the end.

The major problem is simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveler's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will tell you, for instance, how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it. The event will be descibed differently according to whether you are talking about it from the standpoint of your own natural time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is futher complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations while you are actually traveling from one time to another with the intention of becoming your own mother or father.

Most readers get as far as the Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up; and in fact in later aditions of the book all pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy skips lightly over this tangle of academic abstraction, pausing only to note that the term "Future Perfect" has been abandoned since it was discovered not to be.”

[Audhumbla]

Ka før nå tull... sandelig.