| المستخلص: |
Tense in verbal phrase is connected with temporal reference; however, the latter is not always identified in terms of the tense form . For instance, though the past tense always imposes a restricted temporal reference represented by past reference. It can also be used to express(future -in the past- meaning) ,i.e. future in the past time. Quirk et al (1985:218) states that in some of its occurrences a past tense form can be considered as a genuine expression of future – in –the past meaning in that they can be understood to guarantee the fulfillment of the happening of the future event in question: 1. The court was eventually to charge him . 2.I was about to solve the problem. The construction "was eventually to charge him" in (1)indicates that the happening of the event of charging was guaranteed to be fulfilled at a future time in the past –future when seen from a viewpoint in the past- thus (1) expresses a future in the past time. While (2) indicates unfulfilled intention , and since the intention to solve the problem and the non fulfillment of that intention happened in the past ,then (2) denotes a past reference. This paper tries to present a syntactic, semantic and pragmatic analysis of use of the past tense forms to express future meaning in the past. With the absence of the adequate knowledge of the fact that the past tense form may indicate a verified future -in the past- meaning through compatibility between the verb phrase and the adverbs that accompany that verb phrase, the utterance structure, and contextual features, Iraqi EFL learners are expected to find difficulty in identifying the reference of the past tense correctly . The empirical part of this paper is intended to adopt this task . The present paper in both its theoretical and practical parts aims at : (1) highlighting the circumstances where the past can be used to indicate a genuine ' true" future in the past, (2) measuring the learners' ability to recognize the exact time reference (past, future in the past) of the past tense in different constructions and, (3) showing the role of the teaching factor in the performance of the learners, and (4) identifying the role of the mother tongue in the learners' performance. To achieve these goals, it is hypothesized that: (1) Iraqi EFT learners appeal to restrict the reference of most of the past tense occurrences to the past time, (2) the performance of the learners who have received some instruction, henceforth group A, about the past tense forms used to express verified future is expected to be better than the performance of the learners who have not, henceforth group B. and (3) the mother tongue is expected to affect the learners' performance positively. These hypotheses have been verified through adopting a questionnaire of ten exchanges. The one handed second- year students 2006- 2007, Department of English, College of Basic Education are asked to identify the time reference of each utterance. Then their responses are identified and analyzed. 2.Past tense forms for future
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