Discussion Groups / English Usage / November 2006

This should use the subjunctive "that we finish it", rather than a
future nuance.  If you wish to leave the "that" out, no problem:  "It's
high time we finish it".

This talks about plans.  We use the Present Continuous to talk about
plans:  "~~ because I am going to the theatre with John."

The "three years ago" means you are talking about an action that is
finished, and can never happen again (You can never "go to Japan three
years ago" again), so use the Simple Past: "I went to Japan three years
ago."

You're using interrogative word order, in a clause that is not a
question.  Put the subject in front of the verb: "He asked me what he
can do for me."

Verbs have several qualities, of which tense is only one.  For "finite"
verbs, the full collection is voice, mood, tense, aspect, number, and
person; the infinite forms--the participle, the infinitive, and the
gerund--have fewer limiting qualities.

The moods include the indicative, which we use for ordinary factual or
interrogative statements; the imperative, which we use for commands,
requests, warnings, and the like; and the subjunctive, which we use for
representing something as not actually belonging to the domain of fact
or reality, but as merely existent in the mind of the speaker as a
desire, wish, volition, plan, conception, or thought.  The sentence
above, fitting that definition, thus requires the subjunctive mood.

Tenses in the subjunctive mood do not necessarily have the same
significance as in the more familiar indicative mood, especially the
past; but here we have a straightforward present subjunctive (as shown
by "it is time").  The inflection of the present-tense subjunctive is
very simple and perfectly regular.  It is, in all persons, identical to
the bare infinitive form; for "finish", for example, it would be
"I/you/he/she/it/we/they finish".  So the correct form for that
sentence is:

. It's high time we finish it.

This sentence illustrates the verb quality called "aspect".  The two
aspects are "terminate", which represents the act as a finished whole,
and "progressive", which represents the act as going on, in progress.
We use the ordinary tense--whichever is appropriate--for the terminate
aspect, but a  participial form for the progressive; because of that,
the terminate present is used to convey general, habitual, or general
truths: I get up early; dogs bark; water runs downhill.

Examples using past tenses:

. Last Saturday I worked in the garden.

. Last Saturday I was working in the garden when Bill dropped by.

The future progressive form in the first person is "I shall [now often
"will"] be Xing", where Xing is the present participle of the verb in
question.  Because the obstacle to your attendance at the movie is
something that will *be going on* at the same time--a progressive
aspect--your sentence wants to read:

. I can't come to the movie tonight because I shall/will be going to
the theatre with John.

(The shall/will question is a large, complicated one, with the modern
tendency being toward using "will" for futurity in all persons, though
the matter is far from a settled one.)

The sentence as cast is in the present perfect tense ("have been"), but
that is inappropriate because that tense refers to time now past but in
some way connected with the present; when the action is not so
connected, we use the simple past tense (even if the action has just
barely concluded).

One could use the present perfect tense for a statement such as "I've
been to Japan three times," because nothing suggests that your
travelling to Japan is now definitely concluded, with no further trips
to come.  But the "three years ago" places the act completely in the
past, with no clear connection to present time.  So, the wanted form is
the simple past:

. I was [or "went"] to Japan three years ago.

This is another call for the subjunctive mood, as whatever task he
might perform is not yet a factual thing but is "merely existent in the
mind of the speaker as a desire, wish, volition, plan, conception, or
thought."

Here we encounter the phenomenon alluded to above, the fact that in the
subjunctive the past tense most often points to present or future time.
There is in English a small collection of so-called "past-present
verbs" that are each the remains of a shattered once-full verb form;
they include can, dare, may, shall, will, must, ought, and the
now-archaic wot.  What these forms share is the quality of presenting
not facts but conceptions, of representing things as possible,
necessary, desireable, or befitting.  They thus naturally align
themselves with the subjunctive mood, and are used in the modern
subjunctive as verbal auxiliaries.

(The modern subjunctive uses these auxiliaries, whereas the old-style
subjunctive uses inflectional forms, as mentioned at sentence (a)
above.)

The modal subjunctive auxiliary wanted here is "can"--the expression of
possible ability--and under the tense-use rules of the subjunctive, we
want the past form of it, "could".

Also, "what" is an interrogative pronoun; when it is followed by a word
order inverted from the declarative subject-verb order to verb-subject,
it normally makes a question: "What *can I* do for you?"  But when we
are reporting a question and not directly and formally quoting someone,
we use the declarative word order--because we are reporting the
statement, not ourselves asking the question.  Thus, the wanted form
is:

. He asked me what he could do for me.