I thought / past -ing

I thought / past -ing
Message de kastor posté le 06-11-2014 à 07:47:14 (S | E | F)
Hello everyone,

I've been wondering which of the following form is correct, for some reasons I got confused with this form : I thought + conditional OR I thought + past progressif -ing.
Examples :
-- I thought I would come OR I thought I was going to come.
Both sounds good grammatically to me (I might be mistaken) but I guess the meaning differs, doesn't it ?
Or as in :
-- I thought they would watch TV tonight OR I thought they were going to watch TV tonight
Maybe a simple traduction translation could help me to understand the difference between those examples....
Thanks for your help

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Modifié par lucile83 le 06-11-2014 08:18

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Réponse: I thought / past -ing de sherry48, postée le 06-11-2014 à 15:28:05 (S | E)
Hello.

I thought I would come OR I thought I was going to come. There is a different sense in the two statements.
I thought I would come at 3:00PM. This is conditional, tentative--I am describing what I am planning to do.
I thought I was going to come at 3:00PM, BUT my car is being repaired. In this case, the plan is not achieved because something prevented it.
I hope this helps.
Sherry

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Réponse: I thought / past -ing de kastor, postée le 06-11-2014 à 15:43:30 (S | E)
Thank you Sherry for your help.
So what I post in my second post is wrong then ?! So the notion of plan in present in both cases ? I think that I understood but the meaning looks similar to me.
Thank you !

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Modifié par lucile83 le 06-11-2014 19:10

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Réponse: I thought / past -ing de sherry48, postée le 06-11-2014 à 18:04:10 (S | E)
Hello again.

Preterit + Conditional is talking about a plan. Imagine that you plan to visit your family on the weekend, but no particular time has been set. A family member calls you to see what time you are coming. You say that you thought you would come at 3:00PM. In a sense you are volunteering or promising to come at a particular time.

I would use Preterit + past -ing to talk about a plan decided upon in the past, if the plan has now changed. Using the above example, you would reply that you thought you were going to come at 3:00, but now it will not be possible to come until evening.

Does it make sense?
Sherry

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