Many western European languages have a perfect tense, formed by combining an auxiliary verb (meaning ‘have’ or ‘be’) with a past participle. Different languages use this verb form in different ways. A recent paper used translations of a well-known French novel to explore those differences. The aim was to see which tense the translators used…… Continue reading Using translation to show how the perfect differs across languages
Tag: Pragmatics
Yes-no questions in headlines
I recently came across a reference to Betteridge’s Law. Not having heard of this before, I looked it up on the web. As Wikipedia explains, Betteridge’s Law of Headlines says the following: ‘Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.’ Ian Betteridge, a technology journalist, explained that journalists…… Continue reading Yes-no questions in headlines