At 10:02 last night, my student sent me the following message:
I'm so sorry, just let u know my assignment I put it in ur piegon hall.
When I arrived at work at 7:05 am this morning, there was no assignment in my pigeonhole. It eventually arrived at about 8:00 am (I guess).
So, here's my question: was my student lying, in the expectation that I wouldn't arrive so early so would not find out? Or is her grammatical usage flawed, and she does not distinguish between 'put' and 'will put' to express future time?
Note: we cannot refer to tense, as 'put' is an irregular verb, and it could either be present or past tense. However, it would be normal to include the modal auxiliary 'will' to refer to a future event. So I don't know if she was actually telling the truth, telling me that she intended to submit the assignment soon, or if she was lying in the hope that I would not find out about the mismatch between the stated time of submission and the actual time.
