rapra
Member
- Joined
- Mar 29, 2011
- Member Type
- Student or Learner
- Native Language
- Bosnian
- Home Country
- Bhutan
- Current Location
- Barbados
I agree with you.
For the first example sentence you'd need to add something like, say, This building is constructed out of wood. And, yes, again, you are correct: from a semantic point of view you can indeed argue that the building has been constructed. You are right. Past morphology, however, doesn't always contribute meaning, which is, I believe, why the other posters advice using the present passive to express a present fact, nothing more, nothing less.
Consider, for example, the future meaning in The buildings are constructed in May and June. It is April now. The -ed ending does not contribute meaning at all in that example as the meaning expressed is that the buildings have yet to be constructed. The past morphology serves as part of a passive verb construct, a construct that tells us that the actor/doer/agent is not in focus. That's what the other posters are saying, I believe. That the present passive expresses a fact, nothing more, nothing less, and that any additional meaning or interpretation requires additional context, which, by the way, you have given us from the very start, which is why I can't seem to grasp why the other posters don't see what I see, that the past participle can indeed contribute a past meaning, irrespective of the verb's tense.
I could understand your explanation.But my main confusion comes when this past morphology is applied to two simple sentences connected by before.So I want to come back to my initial example of where i had the confusion with this background.My initial example is fine tuned a little bit as per the comments i received and given below once again.With in the brackets i have given the context also.
D:It looks like files are verified before they are moved into this folder. (context is that I am seeing the files in a folder and observing the file information and properties, and then made the above statement with my friend who is sitting next to me.)
So don't you think, in the above context,when the above statement is made , both the actions verified and moved are already done even though present auxiliaries are used.