Every so often, I see a death-notice for someone who was deceased on the following date. However, understandably, it feels grammatically problematic to remark that someone had "died yesterday". What is the correct grammatical approach for referencing events which have occurred but are still in the future when either the date or time is taken into account?
Asked
Active
Viewed 88 times
-3
-
Could you edit your question to include a concrete example, with some dates so that we can visualise what you mean? – Andrew Leach Jul 21 '14 at 15:18
-
2When you see something being used billions of times by native speakers, your first thought should not be “Gee, isn’t this grammatically incorrect?”! – tchrist Jul 21 '14 at 15:19
-
4How can an event have occurred but still be in the future? By definition, future events have not occurred. Are you a time-traveller? – Mr. Shiny and New 安宇 Jul 21 '14 at 15:33
1 Answers
3
I take it you are referring to time-zone issues: if I'm in the U.S., and I'm referring to the death of someone in Japan, the person in question might have died on 2014-07-22 while it's still 2014-07-21 where I am.
In such a situation, it's not correct to use tomorrow, because tomorrow is in the future. If less than 24 hours have passed since death, today is fine. Between 24 and 48 hours—yesterday is fine. Just use the words you would be using in the time zone of the deceased.
Don't say things like *He died tomorrow or *He will come yesterday. It's very confusing and weird, and not fun at all outside a work of fiction that deals with time travel. (I'm thinking of Douglas Adams' The Restaurant at the Edge of the Universe, which has a passage devoted to humorous discussion of verb forms in discussion of time travel, or T.H. White's The Once and Future King, in which Merlyn lives backwards and has dilemmas with verb form choice.)
Micah Walter
- 972
-
3+1 just for the Adams reference. (And for being able—assuming you’re right—to make any kind of sense of the question, too.) – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jul 21 '14 at 16:21