He'll repair/be repairing his car from 7 to 9 pm.

[Marika33]

Forget about from ... to... . Let me suggest using between ... and ... instead.

A: Can you fix my watch?
B: Yes, but not now. I'll do it sometime between nine and ten tomorrow morning.

I found such a sentence here "Leonard da Vinci painted the Last Supper somewhere between 1495 and 1498. It was painted for a Dominican convent in Milan".

Does this sentence mean that the Last Supper got painted(finished) somewhere between 1495 and 1498 (= it could have gotten started much earlier than 1495) or that the action of painting it lasted somewhere from 1495 to 1498?

 

[jutfrank]

I take that to mean he started it in 1495 and finished it in 1498. The use of the word somewhere is a way to say that the dates aren't very precise.

 

[Marika33]

I found such a sentence here "Leonard da Vinci painted the Last Supper somewhere between 1495 and 1498. It was painted for a Dominican convent in Milan".

I take that to mean he started it in 1495 and finished it in 1498.

So that should mean roughtly the same thing as "Leonard da Vinci painted the Last Supper somewhere from 1495 till 1498. It was painted for a Dominican convent in Milan", correct?

In this case, I don't get it at all. What happened to that "interference", you were talking about? Isn't it a problem that the telic "paint" and the simple aspect clash with the durative time phrase? As you told me before:



Maybe what they wrote on that website is just a strange thing to say (as you said here about the other example)? That would explain a lot.

 

[jutfrank]

So that should mean roughtly the same thing as "Leonard da Vinci painted the Last Supper somewhere from 1495 till 1498. It was painted for a Dominican convent in Milan", correct?

Yes.

Maybe what they wrote on that website is just a strange thing to say (as you said here about the other example)? That would explain a lot.

Yes, it's a poor example. I'm not even completely sure what it means. That comes from the interference that you mention. My first interpretation was that the action happened at some point within the three-year duration, but on second thoughts I think it means that the action is durative and happened continuously over a three-year period. I'd ignore this example, if I were you since it's not clear.

 

[Marika33]

When a verb denoting a punctual action is used with words expressing duration, a series of repeated actions is implied;

He hopped up and down for twenty minutes.

@Piscean, this sentence seems perfectly fine even to me since he did hop up and down and did it many times, so many times that it even lasted for twenty minutes.

But here (source) ...


I don't really think the jets ever did this (intercept) at all. As I've said above (in #16):

To me, it sounded (and still sounds) just like Frank's example with the bomb exploding for three hours. So, I decided to look it up in the dictionary to see if I didn't understand what the verb "intercept" even means. I ended up just confirming my thoughts: to me it's the most typical punctual (or telic) verb.

Maybe I'm wrong, but having read the Cambridge definition of the verb intercept, I just don't think the jets ever did this, let alone "for multiple hours". (#18)

That's why I thought these two sentences are different.

• He hopped up and down for twenty minutes.
• At least two different Chinese jets intercepted the Canadian plane consistently for multiple hours during the more than eight-hour-long mission.

 

[Piscean]

@Piscean,

See post #11 in this thread.

 

[Marika33]

See post #11 in this thread.

Well, you did again in #20 of this thread, but you are still welcome not to do so.
As for me, I just explained why your sentence works differently than the one from the YouTube video.

 

[probus]

I take that to mean he started it in 1495 and finished it in 1498. The use of the word somewhere is a way to say that the dates aren't very precise.

Indeed. I'd always thought it a fresco because it is painted on plaster. But it isn't a fresco:

The Last Supper, Leonardo da Vinci [1452-1519]

Museo del Cenacolo Vinciano Official Website . High definition image and insights on the "Last Supper" by Leonardo Da Vinci.

cenacolovinciano.org