Alex read a book while Amy watched TV.

[BestBuddy]

I found this sentence in English Grammar in Use, Unit 119.

• "Alex read a book while Amy watched TV."

Please, help me out, is it necessary for Alex to complete the book so that we can say that?

 

[5jj]

No.

 

[Ogason]

No.

Not a teacher.

 

[BestBuddy]

No.

Thanks! Just a friend of mine said that in English Past Simple meant completion. It makes much more sense since it doesn't.

 

[emsr2d2]

Thanks! It's just that a friend of mine said that in English, the past simple meant means completion. It makes much more sense since that it doesn't.

Note my corrections above. There is no need to capitalise the names of tenses.

 

[BestBuddy]

What about these time markers? Does the past simple mean completion here?

Alex read the book for ten minutes.
Alex read the book from 14:25 to 14:35.
Alex read the book while she watched TV.
Alex read the book until she came home.

 

[5jj]

No.
No.
Not necessarily.
No.

 

[BestBuddy]

Is it better to use the past continuous instead of the past simple with those time markers or not?

Alex was reading the book for ten minutes.
Alex was reading the book from 14:25 to 14:35.
Alex was reading the book while she was watching TV.
Alex was reading the book until she came home.

 

[5jj]

No, it's not 'better'. Use the tense/aspect that conveys the message you wish to convey.

 

[BestBuddy]

No.
No.
Not necessarily.
No.

How does the third differ from the others?

1. Alex read the book for ten minutes.
2. Alex read the book from 14:25 to 14:35.
3. Alex read the book while she watched TV.
4. Alex read the book until she came home.

Why do 1, 2, 4 not mean completion, but 3 'not necessarily'?

 

[5jj]

In the first two, reading a whole book normally takes more than ten minutes.
In the fourth, the suggestion is that Alex stopped reading when 'she' came home.

In the third, it is possible that Alex read the whole book. We don't know for sure.

Don't try to read too much into just the tense/aspect itself.

 

[5jj]

This (from here) may be of interest.


……13a. Sally was writing a report while Barry was preparing lunch.
……13b. While Sally wrote a report, Barry prepared lunch.
……13c. Sally wrote a report while Barry was preparing lunch.
……13d. While Sally was writing a report, Barry prepared lunch.


The writing and preparing are distanced in time. As they occurred in the past we know that the situations denoted are limited in duration (the duration does not extend to the present); the durative aspect therefore emphasises the duration more than the limitation. In [13a] the speaker emphasises the fact that the situations of writing and preparing extended over a period; in [13b] there is no such emphasis, merely a reporting that these situations actualised at the same distanced time. In [13b] and [13c] the suggestion is that the situation referred to using the durative aspect filled a longer time-period than the one referred to in the non-durative aspect. In these two sentences we can talk of one action 'framing' another.

 

[BestBuddy]

In the first two, reading a whole book normally takes more than ten minutes.
In the fourth, the suggestion is that Alex stopped reading when 'she' came home.

In the third, it is possible that Alex read the whole book. We don't know for sure.

Don't try to read too much into just the tense/aspect itself.

Thank you very much. I just thought that if reading a whole book normally takes more than ten minutes, it is necessary to use the past continuous instead of the past simple.

Alex read the book for ten minutes.
Alex was reading the book for ten minutes.

This is what I thought. I'm quite surprised that we still can use the simple past even though the book wasn't read.

 

[Tarheel]

What do you think is wrong with "Alex read the book for ten minutes"? What do you mean by "the book wasn't read'?

 

[BestBuddy]

What do you think is wrong with "Alex read the book for ten minutes"? What do you mean by "the book wasn't read'?

How can we say that something was built, drawn, read, cooked or written by somebody if it wasn't finished?

• Yesterday morning, before going to work, Tom read a book while Masha wrote her book.

None of these books was read or written, because none of these books has been finished. They're still working on those books. Tom is still reading that book. Masha is still writing her book. Even though, Tom read a book, it wasn't read by him.


Am I mistaken somewhere?

 

[jutfrank]

You've misunderstood what is meant by 'completion', with respect to the past simple. In Alex read a book while Amy watched TV, it isn't the book or the TV that were completed—it's the actions of reading and watching that are said to be completed.

 

[BestBuddy]

In Alex read a book while Amy watched TV, it isn't the book or the TV that were completed—it's the actions of reading and watching that are said to be completed.

If we ask that same Alex, "Have you ever read that book?", he can answer with, " Yes, I have." even though he didn't finish it?

 

[5jj]

If that is their response, the natural conclusion to draw would be that they had read the whole book. If they hadn't, they'd be more likely to respond "I started it once, but ...".

 

[jutfrank]

What lies at the heart of your confusion is not really anything to do with past simple, or with grammar at all, but rather with the semantics of the verb read.

You can make a distinction between two different senses of the verb read: telic and atelic. When the verb is telic, you get the sense of completion that you're talking about. A test for whether the verb is telic is whether you can apply certain time frames to it. Imagine that a speaker wants to use the verb read in the sentence Alex read the book to mean 'all of the book' (i.e., in a telic sense). In this case, only the first of the two time frames in the sentence pair below makes sense:

Alex read the book in an hour.
Alex read the book for a hour.

In the atelic sense, the verb read expresses only the action of casting eyes across text, and as such can have duration. In this sense, one can indeed read a book without finishing it, and only the second sentence below makes sense:

Alex read the book in an hour.
Alex read the book for a hour.

 

[BestBuddy]

What lies at the heart of your confusion is not really anything to do with past simple, or with grammar at all, but rather with the semantics of the verb.

Thanks a lot! I really helps!

I didn't know we can use verbs in 'atelic' sense.
"Have you already written the book today?" "Yes, I have" (It's 20% finished now)
"Have you ever drawn a picture?" "Yes, I have" (I stopped drawing the picture at half way)