about "the sequence of tenses."

[nagacat]

Hello :)

Please help me about "the sequence of tenses.". I'd already learned about it when I was student. It is really difficult and so, I'm not still able to understand it now.

About this 2 (A and B) sentences.

A: She will come back again to him one day.
(彼女はいつか、再び彼の元に戻るでしょう。)
B: He has known that (A).
(彼はその時既に、それを知っていました。)

I want to write this 2 (A and

Comments

[derranged]

"He knows that she'll one day come back to him."

Maybe try that? I hope it helps you! ^v^

[nagacat]

Thank you for your reply. But, I wanted to write "A" sentence in the past tense. I'm sorry, my expression was not enough. Anyway, thank you so much :)

How about this?

[rhapsodyatdusk]

I would render A+B in Japanese as 彼女がいつか彼の元に戻ってくると彼は知っていました。and in English as "He knew that she would return to him some day."

I'm not positive that I got the tenses you wanted to convey in B's "He has known that [A]" because your translation for B, "彼はその時既に、それを知っていました," would translate to "At that point, he already knew that [A]."

"He knew that she would return to him some day."
He knew [A]. I express [A] in the subjunctive mood, "would," because he thinks that he knows [A], but it's not 100% certain that [A] will happen (she might not come back to him).

Make sense? I hope I didn't make this overly complicated. This sequential stuff is hard in any language; good luck!

Re: How about this?

[nagacat]

Thank you for your reply. This is very understandable for me. Yes, I think it is better that I write "B" as "he already knew".
And I could understand also about "would".

If you have time, can I ask you another question about these sentences again?
You explained the case of "she might not come back to him" and I thought it was the best. But if I take another case, including the meaning of "She will certainly (100%) come back to him", how do I write?

Re: How about this?

[rhapsodyatdusk]

Great! Glad it helped.

If he's 100% certain that she will come back to him, I could theoretically write "He already knew that she will come back to him."

But to my ear, that sounds wrong, even if I knew that he were 100% certain. I want to say "He already knew that she would come back to him."

But to express the portion that he was 100% certain, I would write this: "He was already certain that she would come back to him." That expresses the certainty but still sounds "right" or natural to a native English speaker. In other words, I would make the certainty clear in B, not in A--A in most cases sounds better in the subjunctive, no matter how certain the situation is.

Re: How about this?

[nagacat]

Thank you so much!

This helps me great. I thought I had to express "100% certain" (or something else like this) in A, and I really didn't know that I could express it in B.

Thank you for your great help again and again!