I have felt great emotion in working at the Hippolytus

False. Could carries past tense too. Did historically. Does now too.

re JTT

You will notice definition 1. The first definition is usually the most common usage. That "could" can be used in other contexts too does not mean that it is not the past tense of "can", as apparently the entire English-speaking world but you recognizes. You can of course go into one of your rants, whenever a dictionary says something you don't like, the dictionary-makers make mistakes (though yyou, of course, never do). I will be perfectly happy to cite other dictionaries, which apparently are all mistaken,but you are not. I think I'll go with their cdonsensus, rather than your outlier opinion.

You completely ignored addressing the following, Jack, in favor of stamping your feet and whining.



You completely ignore the fact that A2K ENLs would be posting example after example if they could [general future] think of any.

I notice that you are among this group, in that you can't post any.

I did notice definition 1, MJ, and what was immediately "noticeable", which you didn't miss, but chose to ignore - MAJOR DISHONEST, Jack, - was that there was no example sentence for that particular "definition". They had no problem providing examples for the others.

Why do you figure that is?



Why are you being so DISHONEST? The English speaking world, in every second, every minute, every hour and every day, for weeks and months and years and ... recognizes that COULD is not the past tense of CAN because it doesn't ever use it like that, because it can't.

You still haven't provided any examples of WOULD as PT of WILL, SHOULD as PT of SHALL, MIGHT as PT of MAY.

I wonder why that is.

You haven't addressed your obvious confusion between SEMANTIC and SYNTACTIC. Would you like me to define those terms for you?

Which leads us to another thing you haven't addressed. Why would COULD and CAN having tense remain when the other modals lost their tense and became tenseless?

Would you like me to provide you with an example of MIGHT as PT of MAY?



That's a lie, Jack. It's not a matter of me liking something. Language science doesn't work on "liking" or not. That's the province of prescription, as you are well aware.

Dictionaries aren't infallible, linguists aren't infallible, ... . But what language science does, it eschews "liking" in favor of proof. Why was there no example sentence, Jack?



By all means, please do. Do you think you might be able to find a definition with an actual example sentence?




What consensus, Jack? Everyone repeating the same mistake. You must consider how long these dictionaries repeated silly prescriptions. OED took until 1998 to retract the split infinitive "rule".

-It has had surprising and considerable success in all these fields during the first year of its existence. (it/its=an organisation['s])

The first year is obviously in the past; must HAS HAD be changed to HAD?