Tham khảo tài liệu 'the grammar of the english verb phrase part 85', ngoại ngữ, ngữ pháp tiếng anh phục vụ nhu cầu học tập, nghiên cứu và làm việc hiệu quả | The manipulation of temporal focus for a specific purpose 581 The manipulation of temporal focus for a specific purpose A shift of temporal focus from the present to the past can result in an implicature of nonapplicability at t0. For example when the verb form used expresses posteriority a shift of temporal focus to the past suggests that what was foreseen at some past time is no longer foreseen I was going to go to Cuba this summer is naturally understood as implying but I am no longer going to do so . Given the salience of the present moment there is an assumption that if an intention is still valid it will be located in the present. The use of the past form of be going to locates the intention in the past and implicates that the intention is no longer valid. One of the possibilities inherent in the English tense system is that the speaker may sometimes shift the temporal Focus from the present to the past in order to suggest that a situation no longer holds or may no longer hold at to. The following observations illustrate this. As pointed out in we can use the present tense of be going to to refer to an arrangement about the post-present that is valid at t0 The shop is going to be closed tomorrow. The decision to close the shop must have been taken before t0 but the tense form does not refer to that time. The speaker just informs the hearer of the present existence of the decision. However the speaker can also say The shop was going to be closed tomorrow. Out of context this sentence strongly suggests that the decision made in the past is suspended at t0. The speaker now uses was going to which expresses T-posteriority in a past domain see . However as is clear from tomorrow the actualization of the situation is to be interpreted as W-posterior to t0. Other things being equal statements about the post-present are more easily linked to t0 than to a past time. By using was going to instead of is going to the speaker adopts a marked .
