[riverkid]

[quote=shun;111133]
My reply: It is a shame you gentlemen don't even know there are past repeated actions, present repeated actions, and future repeated actions. They entail different tenses.

I have to say, Shun, that I'm well aware of this and knowing what a bright fellow Mr P is, I firmly believe he does too. If "I brush my teeth everyday", it's quite apparent that I can readily state, "I brushed my teeth everyday last week".

As to the future, it's not so, ... cast in stone. The likelihood is that "I'll brush my teeth everyday next week" but even a little thing like death could step in to prevent this from happening.

Nothing escapes from time. No "meaning" can ever explain tense.

It's not that "meanings" have to or should explain tense; it's that we explain meanings by showing how we use different tenses to effect a certain meaning.

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To MrPedantic's example "2. I get up. I brush my teeth. I have my breakfast. Then the phone rings. It's my stalker, calling from the phone box outside...", [font=Verdana]Riverkid wrote:[color=black]

My reply: Can't you gentlemen see it is from the paragraph that one sees it is anecdote or story?

Would you see it is anecdote or story just by Simple Present, as in the following ONE sentence?
Ex: I brush my teeth.
When you put sentences together, you use tenses correctly. But the bad thing is, you usually don't put them together. This explains why you can write English but cannot explain tense on one-sentence basis. You haven't known exactly where the difficulty is, as you have admitted:

Agreed, Shun. It is impossible to state categorically what some isolated sentence means. We can, however, set a particular meaning for an isolated sentence in order to help explain certain things.