[Grammar] It is high time

[BDX777]

What is the point of using the past simple with "high time"
e.g
1. It is high time for you to go home
2. It is high time you went home

 

[emsr2d2]

What is the point of using the past simple with "high time"?
e.g.
1. It is high time for you to go home.
2. It is high time you went home.

What do you mean by "What is the point"? Are you asking why we generally use the past simple with "high time [that] you/I/we ..."?

 

[BDX777]

exactly, why should we use the past simple if we can use the present simple.

 

[emsr2d2]

Exactly. Why should we use the past simple if we can use the present simple?

Be aware that "What's the point of ..." isn't interchangeable with "Why ...?"

The simple answer is that we don't use the present simple with "It's high time [that] ...". The pattern is "It's high time [that] + personal pronoun + past simple" or "It's high time [that] + personal pronoun + past simple continuous".

It's high time [that] I went.
It's high time [that] I was going.

The infinitive "to go" really only works in "It's time for you to go home".

 

[BDX777]

I got it!
Thanks for quick answer.
Just to be sure, is "It's high time I go" not correct?

 

[Rover_KE]

"It's high time I go" is not correct.

 

[BDX777]

I know that sometimes I am captain obvius, but does "It is high time for you to clean your room" mean exactly the same what "It is high time you cleaned your room".

 

[emsr2d2]

It's pointless to ask us whether an unnatural sentence (ie one that no native would say) is identical in meaning to a natural, grammatical sentence. Just remember that you can't go wrong with "high time + past simple".

 

[Tdol]

1. It is high time for you to go home

This works if you remove high.

 

[TheParser]

NOT A TEACHER


Hello, BDX777:

I have found some information that may interest you.

1. "It's high time we send him a letter."

a. "If there's a real intention to send that letter now that the reminder has been issued, then the verb is present."

2. "It's high time we sent him a letter."

a. "If the speaker has some doubt that we'll ever get around to sending the letter after all, then the verb is past."


The website for this analysis: THE GRAMMAR LOGS #471.

 

[Phaedrus]

What is the point of using the past simple with "high time"

I have a couple of books that discuss the origin of the past form in the subordinate clause of the "It is time [that] . . ." construction, to which the "It is high time [that] . . ." construction is obviously closely related. The independent clause of such constructions is "It is (high) time." In earlier English (Old, Middle, and Early Modern), the "be" verb in the independent clause was often the past subjunctive form "were." For example, in the novel Ivanhoe (1820), by Sir Walter Scott, there is the following sentence:

"It were time we left our wine flagons."

According to Francis James, in his work Semantics of the English Subjunctive (UBC Press, 1986), "[t]he past subjunctive has no current uses in independent clauses" (p. 70); however, "it survives in conditional clauses and object clauses, both of which are dependent" (p. 73). He gives a couple of paraphrases with conditionals, the implicit idea being (as I understand it) that the "It is time [that] . . ." construction makes a use of the subjunctive (or modal forms) comparable to what we find in the subordinate clause of Type 2 conditionals (viz., "If we left our wine flagons, it would be [formerly were] good").

Francis James gives the following paraphrase for "It were time we left our wine flagons": "'If we left (were to leave) our wine flagons, it were (would be) time' (i.e., it would be a good time or the right time)" (p. 77). As for "It is time we left our wine flagons," he states that it "is roughly comparable to the sentence, 'It would be desirable if (one would wish that) we left our wine flagons, because it is high time to do so,' and represents the state of affairs, 'our leaving our wine flagons,' as an imagined possibility" (p. 83).