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It is easy to see how primitive warfare might sometimes have beneficial environmental effects; it is not clear how they could amount to a cause of primitive warfare.

Could you tell me, please, what grammatical tense is meant here, present or past tense?

KillingTime
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Dmitry
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    Which verb are you asking about? Only verbs have tenses, and there are several verbs here. – John Lawler Aug 18 '23 at 16:09
  • "might" and "could". Do they indicate past or present tense? – Dmitry Aug 18 '23 at 16:23
  • What about conditional tense? – Gio Aug 18 '23 at 16:33
  • Syntactically, the primary tense is Present (It is* easy, it is not clear). And even the modal* verb elements are essentially "present" (might have, could amount to). But *semantically, it's obviously focused on the distant past (primitive warfare). Logically, that focus on the past "should" be reflected by Past Tense / Conditional Present Perfect (...might ... have had beneficial ...effects, ...how they could have amounted to a cause).* It's just that native Anglophones tend to avoid "unnecessary" Perfect verb forms. – FumbleFingers Aug 18 '23 at 16:57
  • Does this answer your question? Can the modal auxiliary verbs be considered to be in the present tense (form, not meaning)? – FumbleFingers Aug 18 '23 at 17:00
  • "Primitive warfare" here means war among modern "primitive" peoples (Oceanic societies etc.) – Dmitry Aug 18 '23 at 17:01
  • @Dmitry: Well, you're reading it, so I guess you should know. But I must admit I'm surprised that anyone can get stuff published today calling people (or their large-scale armed conflicts) "primitive". – FumbleFingers Aug 18 '23 at 17:04
  • Here is the whole fragment: – Dmitry Aug 18 '23 at 17:08
  • There is the old problem surrounding the fundamental premise of cultural determinism, to which the ecologists are heirs. The ecologists reify culture as thoroughly as Margaret Mead, speaking of it as an independent variable that is somehow superorganic. In addition they seem to reify ecology. They speak of ecosystems having "needs." – Dmitry Aug 18 '23 at 17:09
  • They speak of these evolutionary forces pulling the strings of human puppets - the warriors who believe they fight for pigs or honor or something - but receiving no input from the puppets. The basic theoretical problem is more serious than in the case of sociobiology because there is a body of generally accepted Darwinian theory that makes sociobiology at least theoretically plausible; but there is no such theory behind cultural determinism, and it is difficult to imagine just how ecosystems express their needs and how cultures respond to these. – Dmitry Aug 18 '23 at 17:10
  • It is easy to see how primitive warfare might sometimes have beneficial environmental effects; it is not clear how they could amount to a cause of primitive warfare. – Dmitry Aug 18 '23 at 17:10
  • I don't see anything in that "extended context" to suggest the writer is talking about current societies and wars. The use of Present Tense in, say, the warriors who believe* they fight for pigs* just looks to me like a vivid "presentation technique" intended to "bring the subject to life". And after all, the underlying focus of attention is "evolutionary forces" that have been active (if indeed the contextually relevant forces even exist at all) for many millions of years - nearly all of which timeframe is well in the past! – FumbleFingers Aug 18 '23 at 17:24
  • Modal verbs don’t have tense, but the sense of the sentence is “present tense” of the “general truth” type. The modal verbs provide a hedge on that truth. Roughly, you can swap in a non-modal to understand: Primitive warfare [might] does* have beneficial environmental effects; it is not clear how those effects [could] do cause primitive warfare.* --> Primitive warfare has* beneficial environmental effects; it is not clear how those effects cause primitive warfare.* – Tinfoil Hat Aug 19 '23 at 02:56
  • Many-many thanks for your explanations! – Dmitry Aug 22 '23 at 19:50

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It is easy to see how primitive warfare might sometimes have beneficial environmental effects; it is not clear how they could amount to a cause of primitive warfare.

I will assume you want help understanding the statement. A paraphrase:

It is possible that primitive warfare sometimes has benefits for the environment; that is not hard to imagine; but what is not clear is how those environmental benefits could cause primitive societies to engage in warfare.

The sentence is silent on whether primitive warfare refers to the warfare of current-day primitive societies or of those primitive societies from the distant past, or both. It is a generalization.

amount to a cause ... means something like "could be so compelling a motive that primitive societies would intentionally go to war for that purpose, or unintentionally by virtue of being motivated by environmental forces they did not understand or even recognize."

The sentence is questioning how the environmental benefits of war could produce war.

TimR
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  • I think in principle the cited text could just as well have used the "present tense" versions (may, can) instead of the "past tense" conditional modals (might, could). The fact that the writer didn't choose to do this suggests to me he's not even thinking about "warfare" engaged in by current "primitives". – FumbleFingers Aug 18 '23 at 17:30
  • @FumbleFingers: I would disagree. If the subject was exclusively past primitive societies, might have had and how they could have amounted to would have been the phrasings, or might well have been the phrasings. – TimR Aug 18 '23 at 17:31
  • But per my first comment under the question, most competent writers would avoid that unnecessarily complex verb form if they thought their readers would mostly make the same assumptions as me (rather than the OP here) regarding the primary temporal focus of the text's subject matter. And I'm a native speaker, which presumably means I'm part of the writer's target audience. The OP isn't, so it's unremarkable that he should make a different assumption. – FumbleFingers Aug 18 '23 at 17:35
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    ...I don't mean the writer would be consciously thinking that he's only concerned with past primitive societies. As you say, he's observing *general (timeless)* "truths". – FumbleFingers Aug 18 '23 at 17:38
  • @FumbleFingers primitive doesn't always refer to the past. And could have had or could have amounted isn't that complex. Do you have V8 tomato juice in the UK? There was a TV ad where people who are drinking some soft drink bonk themselves on the forehead with the heel of their hand and say, "I could have had a V8!" – TimR Aug 18 '23 at 17:39
  • I don't think this "disagreement" is going to get any further. I don't disagree with your penultimate paragraph. My disagreement is with the OP saying the writer is specifically referring to current "primitive" societies. Imho the writer isn't explicitly excluding current societies, but he'd probably prefer that particular issue to remain "vague, indeterminate". – FumbleFingers Aug 18 '23 at 17:43
  • ...also note that just because I say native Anglophones tend to avoid "unnecessary" Perfect forms doesn't imply they have a problem with necessary usages such as "I could have had a V8!" (in a context where where "I could have* a V8!"* would make no sense). – FumbleFingers Aug 18 '23 at 17:46
  • Thanks a lot for your comments and explanations! – Dmitry Aug 22 '23 at 19:50