[shun]

Incognittum,

You had written this:

Originally Posted by incognittum

Also, if you refer to present time as being 1,000 years, anything beyond that is future time.

Now you added:

Originally Posted by incognittum

It depends on the individual how he sees the present time. If I refer to these 1,000 years as the time I was waiting for I could say it is the present time. Time can be anything; a minute, an hour or a day. It is up to me to decide how big of a piece of time I am refering to.

If, and I stress again on IF, one refers to present time as being 1,000 years, I agree with you beyond that is future time. But in this case, there is no future time between 1 and 999 years. There will be no future time in next hour, nor next week, nor next month, nor next year, nor next decade, nor next ten decades.... Does this make sense?

I hope you can see what follows. This IF doesn't happen.

Of course, there is another IF, which is mine. The present time is overlapped with the future time. Therefore, there is future time both before and after 1,000 years.

And your choice is?

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Originally Posted by incognittum

...verb that indicates the time, such as past, present, or future, as well as whether the action or state is continued or completed.
Tense specifies whether the verb refers to action in the past, present, or future...

What a mess about the basic terms we have here.

In "We are discussing English tense", this is how we call them:
1. the sentence is "We are discussing English tense".
2. the so-called action is the idea we have got from the sentence, whether a state or an activity.
3. the verb is "discuss".
4. the tense is the form of the verb, now "are discussing", which tells the time of the action.
5. time is past, present, and future; and no more.

Therefore, verb is NOT that indicates the time; tense is.
Time is NOT "as well as whether the action or state is....."

I know there have been many books called exactly "The English Verb", written by different authors at different times, and they talked about tense. But really "verb" is not tense that indicates the time. If you really look for verb, look up a dictionary, rather than a grammar book.

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As for the example "Today will be a rainy day", you wrote:

Originally Posted by incognittum

I think I tried to explain that "today" and 'day' refer to different times not that they are different.

Then I think your explanation allows that, in "John is a strange guy", John and 'guy' refer to different persons not that they are different.

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I asked: Are you telling me, you don't agree to my conclusion that the present is overlapped with the future?

Originally Posted by incognittum

If future time can exist within present, as in; in two hours it will be future time and that happens within the day that someone would clasify as present then that would overlap if it can be put that way.

So, you don't disagree.

You too have a good summer holiday!