• Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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          7 months ago

          If I say “my brother is traveling to France,” that doesn’t mean “at some point in the future, my brother will travel to France.”

          At least I’ve never heard anyone use “is” followed by an action that way.

          • purplexed@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            It’s very clunky in its usage. Which isn’t good English, but neither is the title, so I’m over it.

          • ABCDE@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            Perhaps you’re not a native speaker, but it absolutely is used that way in real life. My brother is travelling to France in August, for example.

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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              7 months ago

              So you mean if you add a qualifier, that changes the meaning?

              Are you saying that as he goes to France in August, you would never say “my brother is traveling to France?”

              And you still haven’t answered me about The Wizard of Oz and Fargo.

              • ABCDE@lemmy.world
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                7 months ago

                Because I do not care for weird analogies.

                You added an example, I made it make clearer sense for you, someone who had never heard of Present Continuous for plans in their lives, apparently.

                I’m waking up early tomorrow, so I’m done.

                • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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                  7 months ago

                  So you wouldn’t say “my brother is traveling to France” while he’s on the plane? What do you say? “My brother is will be were traveling to France?”

                  And you claimed you could infer an author’s intent from a title. Therefore you can tell me that you knew for a fact before seeing or hearing about the movie Fargo just from the title alone that only a few seconds of the film took place in Fargo. Correct or not?

    • ABCDE@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      It doesn’t, it refers to one but can be of many. A person is attending a football match for the first time today. It doesn’t mean no one else is.

      • DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        No. The sentence you posted implies a football match was never before attended by any person.

        If you want to say one of many, you should say Some person/someone.

        Or you can qualify the person. E.g. A non-american astronaut will be landing on the moon for the first time.

        • ABCDE@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Nope, because you know football matches have been attended by people. Ignoring basic facts doesn’t make your understand correct, it’s silly.

          • DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            Yes, so we are talking about a sentence in the headline where we don’t have extra context, yet you make an sentence where it is clear the sentence is stupid based on outside context and argue it should be interpreted the other way around because otherwise we know it is stupid. Amazing logic.

            Just because I can deduce what you actually meant does not mean the sentence is correct.

              • DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
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                7 months ago

                I for one don’t know how many astronauts are being sent to the moon when. And if most people do, no point writing this article, is there?

                  • DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
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                    7 months ago

                    So what? No one is saying the sentence says or implies for the first time. It just implies one person will be going this time.