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ESL forum >
Ask for help > Why don īt they help him?
Why don īt they help him?
Tapioca
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Why don īt they help him?
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You are walking in the street and you see an old man on the
other side stumble and fall to the ground. He tries to get up but he can īt.
Nobody is helping him.
You say "Why don īt they help him?"
This is not a suggestion like "Why doesn īt he take an
aspirin?/Why don īt you go to the doctor?"
It īs something happening right now, when you īd normally use
present continuous, not in the future, or regularly. Present continuous would
be possible, but I think this usage would be more common.
I thought it īs because there is an inferred "...when
people can see he needs help" and that the īwhen � is influencing the
tense? That īs probably completely wrong.
I was just preparing a powerpoint and I īm struggling a
little to explain this :-))
Please put me out of my misery. :-) |
1 Nov 2015
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maryse pey�
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Well, let īs take the GENERAL idea, the idea of some truth you have noticed several times, or maybe heard, or maybe both.
So as the general truth is that people don īt help it is a little bit like a habit, a bad and painful habit but a habit.
It was true in the past, it is true at the very moment you are speaking and it will be true in the future... So it it the simple present of "hatbit", of general truth.
May this explanation help you ?
Maryse. |
1 Nov 2015
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yanogator
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I was thinking along the same lines as Maryse, so I think you īre going to have to use that. As she īs saying, it isn īt really a habit or general truth, but it has that feeling. I agree with you that the present tense would definitely be possible, without sounding at all strange, and that the simple present is probably more common. Your thought about "when" wouldn īt change anything. Either tense would work with that extension, too. Thinking about it a little more, I realize that we use "why don īt/doesn īt" in other similar situations. If you are waiting too long at the bus stop, you might say "Why doesn īt the bus come?", and it probably wouldn īt be difficult to find other examples. Bruce |
1 Nov 2015
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Tapioca
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Hi Maryse/Bruce, Thank you. I think I can see what Maryse means but I just canīt see it as a general truth/something always true, because the example is very specific and is tied very much to that moment. Itīs a single event, happening at this moment. Itīs not repeated and not a generalisation. I thought of other examples, as Bruce did, which work in a similar way but are maybe not as clear, for example: - Itīs a scandal! Why doesnīt she resign?
- Why doesnīt someone switch off that alarm? (this one would sound a little strange in continuous)
But I think my first example is the best to focus on because it could also be continuous and it is clearly talking about an event in progress now. But perhaps what Maryse said is right in that somehow although the event itself is not general, that we are comparing it to an inferred generalisation: ---> "Why donīt they help him? (Isnīt that what people normally do in this situation)?" But surely there is a more straightforward rule at work here, right? Is it, after all, a form of suggestion? Because you could say "They should help him!" and it would have almost the same meaning (in which case we have an īexcuse� for using simple present). It just feels like a genuine question expressing bewilderment rather than a suggested solution to me. Tap
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1 Nov 2015
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cunliffe
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It may be inferring a wish or desire, in the way that īwhy won īt they help him? � is.
Just by the way, I think the most natural utterance in the situation would be īWhy isnīt anybody helping him?� As long as the bystanders are strangers, that is.
Edit: Mm, not sure īwhy donīt they help him?� works here. You would have to know the īthey�. What do you think? Just trying to help.
But I agree, itīs fairly standard usage.
īHoy, you lot! Iīm talking. Why donīt you listen?�
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1 Nov 2015
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maryse pey�
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Well, what about a simple present of evidence ? as it exists a present continuous to mean exasperation ?
- Oh ! No ! He is always playing the piano when I am here !!!
- Why don īt you tell him to stop ? |
1 Nov 2015
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67Englishteacher
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This is all really interesting! I also agree with maryse īs feeling that it sounds like a comparison to a standard way to act in any similar situation (hence the idea of genericity triggering the simple present). Thinking back about my linguistics classes, what I might add is that the simple present might work better than the continuous form because the speaker isn īt so much talking about the description of the event itself (the ongoing process of not helping) as about the opposition between helping and anything else. The point is: people can choose between a whole range of actions (including not helping) and the speaker is stating that the choice was a bad one IN RELATION TO the other possible options. I don īt know if my explanation (which is more a guess/feeling than an explanation, really!) is clear. If it is, does it make sense to you??? |
1 Nov 2015
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Jayho
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Hi all I have absolutely no idea however a bit of googling came up with this: http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/218009/why-dont-you-with-be You have to scroll down a bit to However, the construction 𢘛hy don īt you (just)� has another, slightly different meaning, too Maybe it helps? Cheers Jayho
P.S. When I add a link in FF and then press the space bar, it it doesnīt automatically hyperlink it like it does in IE11. Can I change this somehow?
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1 Nov 2015
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Tapioca
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This is pretty hard and I really appreciate the input from everyone. I was kind of hoping someone would just say "Well of course, that īs the "Why don īt they" Grammar Rule no. 347 where you do X because of Y and Z". :-)) It īs definitely NOT a suggestion, is it? It īs not addressed to anybody and it feels rhetorical. It īs a comment, similar to "They could at least help him to get up!". I believe we īre feeling our way to an answer but it īs hard to pin down and perhaps I don īt understand all the suggestions but somehow I think the answer might be in here if I combine what Maryse and 67 said. IF I understood those correctly.... Are we saying this: - People are walking past him.
- There are multiple opportunities to help him, even in a few seconds.
- No-one makes the choice to help him.
- Therefore we are describing somehow īregular� events?
I liked this until I just wrote it down like that right now. Somehow it feels like a īfix�. I probably also misunderstood what Maryse and 67 were saying. I think cunliffe and jayhoīs answers may be similar in that it may be a īspecial case� of an īexasperated wish�. But the only reference I have seen to that was in the post Jayho linked to and it feels like there ought to be a simpler explanation. I havenīt found anything in my grammar books, even Greenbaum & Quirk! Like cunliffe, I also wondered about "Why won īt they help him?" which I think means "why do they refuse to help him?" It īs very similar, but is it the same? I am leaning at the moment towards the possibility that itīs somehow related to a conditional sentence: "Why donīt they help him? If they help him, he will be all right". Or "If they donīt help him, he will suffer"
Does that make any sense? Also please jump in if I have misrepresented/misunderstood anything anyone said! :-)
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2 Nov 2015
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maryse pey�
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I will not say at all you have misunderstood but rather that TRUTH has multiple sides and that sometimes it is difficult to give only 1 concrete rule - may I say scientifical ? - because there is part of human feeling in this explanation. And as it is well known, human feelings are difficult to be clearly defined because they are ABSTRACT ...
So when i meet this kind of wondering I make my students trying to explain in their OWN way how they understand AND FEEL the statement and point out the most logic part of their deductions. |
2 Nov 2015
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douglas
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Could it have something to do with the "hypothetical" nature of the statement?
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2 Nov 2015
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