Learn English – “I built a giant house of playing cards an hour ago”

past-simplepast-tensetime-words

I built a giant house of playing cards an hour ago.

Given that building it took many hours (say, three), does the sentence mean that:

I finished building a giant house of playing cards an hour ago.

or

I started building a giant house of playing cards an hour ago.

or something else?

Best Answer

  1. I built a giant house of playing cards an hour ago.'

..means that

I finished building a giant house of playing cards an hour ago.

There is nothing present in the original sentence to provide any clue on how long the building process lasted. The words "an hour ago" point at the moment in time when the process finished.

You might say:

I was building a giant house of playing cards an hour ago.

..this would mean that an hour ago you were engaged in the process of building a house of cards. We don't know whether you finished the work.

P.S. Some jargon

We call situations similar to that described in sentence 1 "accomplishments". An "accomplishment" describes a process, but a process that has some terminal point ("the construction is finished") beyond which the process cannot continue. That's why when "built" is used in the past tense we know that "the mission has been accomplished".

The combination "to build a house" is "telic": it has some duration but it must have an end.

There are situations in which we describe "activities" that have no inherent terminal point (they are "atelic"), like "playing the guitar":

I played the guitar an hour ago. (atelic; the playing could've continued further, there is no inherent "endpoint")

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