Philo & Sophia · Lesson OnePresent simple and present continuous; stative verbs · A1–B1

The Instant and the Standing Rule

In which Marcos is caught drifting off mid-argument, and Sophia turns the catching of him into a lesson about two different kinds of "now."

The afternoon copying session had gone quiet in the particular way it goes quiet just before someone gets in trouble. Marcos had a tablet in front of him, a stylus in his hand, and a line half-finished — the harbour master keeps — and had not moved either the stylus or the sentence in some time.

Sophia did not look up from the scroll she was re-pinning at the corners. "Marcos."

Nothing.

"Marcos is falling asleep," Demetria said, not unkindly, from the next bench, in the tone of someone reporting the weather.

He came up out of it with the particular violence of a person who wants it understood that he was, in fact, thinking very hard the whole time. "I wasn't."

"You were," said Sophia, "and I'm glad of it, because Demetria just handed me the whole of today's lesson without meaning to. Say it again, Demetria. Exactly as you said it."

"Marcos is falling asleep."

"Good. Now, Philo — the library rule about the doors. The one carved over the archive entrance, that none of you ever read because you're all in too much of a hurry to get through them."

Philo didn't need to look it up. "The library does not close its doors before sunset."

"Also good. Two sentences, both sitting in what grammarians are content to call the present tense, as though that settled anything. But look at what each one is actually doing before you agree they belong in the same drawer."

The instant

An action caught in the middle of happening — true now, and only now

"'Marcos is falling asleep' is not a fact about Marcos in general," Sophia said. "It was not true of him this morning. It will not, I hope, be true of him in an hour. It is true for exactly as long as it takes to be caught doing it, and not one moment longer. That is the first shape of the present — the present continuous: is/am/are plus the -ing form, an action held open in the middle of itself, like a door caught before it shuts.

"Demetria, give me another. Something true only right now, in this room."

"The clerk is re-shelving that basket." Across the alcove, the young clerk looked up at the sound of his own sentence, startled, then went back to it. "And it won't be true in an hour either. He'll have finished, or given up."

"True now. Not necessarily true later. Hold on to that phrase — it is doing more work than it looks like it's doing."

The standing rule

Not an instant at all — what holds, whether or not anyone is watching

"Now the library rule," said Sophia. "Is it true only this instant, the way Marcos's nap was?"

"No," said Philo slowly, working it out as he spoke. "It was true yesterday. It will be true tomorrow, whether or not any of us happen to be standing under the archive door reading it at the time."

"Which is exactly the point, and exactly why the name of the tense misleads you. The present simple is not really about this present instant at all — it's what holds, instant after instant, whether or not you happen to be watching. A rule. A habit. A fact of the world. None of them live inside a single moment the way 'is falling asleep' does. That's what makes it simple present, not that it happens to be true right now."

"So it isn't really about the present," Marcos said, newly awake and clearly pleased with himself for spotting the flaw. "You've named it after the wrong thing."

"I didn't name it. The grammarians did, centuries before either of us, and I agree with you that they might have chosen better. But you've understood it exactly, which is the part that matters. Continuous, for the instant. Simple, for everything that outlasts it — the rule, the habit, the plain fact standing there whether or not you happen to be looking at it."

The verbs that refuse to hurry

Some things are true right now and still take the "wrong" tense

"But you'd never say 'I am knowing the answer,'" said Demetria, "even though it's true right now, this instant, same as Marcos's nap was."

Sophia smiled the particular smile she keeps for a pupil who has just found the exception before being told there was one. "Because knowing isn't an action in progress the way falling asleep is. Some verbs describe a state rather than a doing — know, want, believe, love, own, seem. Nothing is 'in progress' about knowing something; either you know it or you don't, all at once, with no middle to be caught in. States like these take the simple present even when they are true this very instant. You don't say 'I am wanting a copy of the treaty.' You say 'I want a copy of the treaty,' plainly, because wanting has no motion to interrupt."

"So the test isn't 'is it true right now,'" Philo said. "It's 'does it have a middle you could be caught in the middle of.'"

"Exactly that. A nap has a middle. A fact does not. A state does not. Test any verb against it and the tense chooses itself."

Philo's footnote

"In Hebrew," Philo added, unable to resist it for long, "the verb doesn't ask when at all, not the way Greek or your Latin does. It only asks whether the action is complete or still unfolding — finished or open. Your 'present tense' is really borrowing the label of a single moment for something that, half the time, has nothing to do with one moment in particular. Hebrew, I think, is honest about this in a way English isn't: it never pretends a standing rule and a passing instant belong to the same 'now.'"

"Which is one more reason," said Sophia, "not to trust the name of a tense to tell you what it does. Ask instead: is this caught mid-happening, or does it simply hold? The verb — and Marcos's stylus — will tell you the rest."

"Even my laziness?" said Marcos.

"Especially your laziness. It has been true for as long as any of us have known you, holds whether or not you're being watched, and shows no sign of being caught in the middle of changing. That, Marcos, is present simple if I have ever heard it."

The lesson in a table

For copying out

Written exercises

A. Instant, or standing rule?

For each sentence, say whether it is a present continuous (caught mid-happening) or a present simple (habit, rule, or state) — and say which test question proved it.

1. "Demetria is copying a new scroll this afternoon."
2. "The Nile floods every summer."
3. "Philo believes his own footnotes a little too much."
4. "Look — Marcos is actually taking notes, for once."
5. "Sophia knows where every scroll in this library is kept."
6. "The ink seller opens his stall at dawn."

B. The verb with no middle

Sort these verbs into two columns — those with a "middle" you could be caught in (they can take -ing: run, copy, argue…) and those without one (they describe a state and normally refuse -ing: know, want, believe, own, seem, love). Then write one sentence with each state verb in the simple present, and explain in a line why "am knowing," "am wanting," and so on sound wrong.

C. Marcos's defence

Marcos insists that "present tense" is a bad name, since half of what it describes isn't really about the present moment at all. In three or four sentences, argue his side as strongly as you can — then, in three or four more, argue Sophia's case for why the name still makes sense once you see the instant and the standing rule as two ends of the same idea.