On Mon, Aug 18, 2003 at 10:41:21AM -0400, Anthony DeRobertis wrote: > On Sunday, Aug 17, 2003, at 19:50 US/Eastern, Andrew Suffield wrote: > > >>I thought > >> > >> <li>As a last resort, if you haven't received any offers for a > >>or > >> > >> <li>As a last resort, if you didn't receive any offers for a > >> > >>are the only acceptable forms in my Japanese junior high school days. > > > >Both of these are valid on their own, but the latter conflicts with > >the tense of the rest of the paragraph - "haven't received" is recent > >past, "didn't receive" is distant past. > > I didn't receive any replies by the deadline. [and can't now, because > the deadline was yesterday] > I haven't received any replies. [Though I still may receive some] > > "haven't received" is present perfect, no "recent past." A very nice > tense, really. Same thing; you're looking at the endpoint, and I'm looking at the (non-)event. The nature of this tense is that it is both past and present. [I picked that description because Japanese doesn't really *have* a present perfect tense (at least, not in the same form), and I wanted to stick to common ground.] > >"A few weeks after registering, if you still haven't received any > >offers, then you can send e-mail to <email gpg-coord@nm.debian.org> > >telling them precisely where you live (give the names of some big > >cities close to you)." > > Alternatively, "If you don't receive any offers within a few weeks of > registering, then you may [not can, you always can]...." Always "may", too. I'm not sure this changes anything. > Now, "precisely" and some close big cities don't seem to fit together > too well. Maybe, "...telling them precisely where you live as well as > the closest major cities." Offhand I get this: "A few weeks after registering, if you still haven't received any offers, then you can send e-mail to <email gpg-coord@nm.debian.org> telling them precisely where you live, and giving the names of some big cities close to you." -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- |
Attachment:
pgprwbeLWe046.pgp
Description: PGP signature