Herb, and all,
I have been working on a similar application to Shirley Jackson's
"The Lottery." I figure this is as good a time as any to pass on my
current version of that:
Remote past in Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”
Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is an interesting case study in use
of the past perfect. Most of the action takes place on one day of the
lottery, an annual event in the life of the village with a long
(partially lost) history. Past tense is dominant for the “current”
day’s events, past perfect for earlier times, though past perfect shows
up in a few other places as well. Here are the openings to the first
four paragraphs.
“The morning of the 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh
warmth of a full summer day; the flowers were blooming profusely and the
grass was richly green. The people in the village began to gather in the
square….”
“The children assembled first, of course….”
“Soon the men began to gather….”
“The lottery was conducted—as were the square dances, the teen-age
club, the Halloween program—by Mr. Summers, who had time and energy to
devote to civic activities…”
In the fifth paragraph, the story begins to deal with the fact that
the lottery is a long standing tradition, and this is reflected in
perfect aspect verbs. Here’s the first sentence in that paragraph.
“The original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost long
ago, and the black box now resting on the stool had been put into use
even before Old Man Warner, the oldest man in town, was born.”
Paragraph six mixes these two senses of time at the outset.
“Mr. Martin and his oldest son, Baxter, held the black box
securely on the stool until Mr. Summers had stirred the papers
thoroughly with his hand. Because so much of the ritual had been
forgotten or discarded, Mr. Summers had been successful in having slips
of paper substituted for the chips of wood that had been used for
generations.”
A little further in the story: “The people had done it so many
times that they only half listened to the directions….”
I think Herb is right; the focus of the story is very much on what
happens on a particular day, with past history an important (in this
case, more remote) background. In this last sentence, the fact that they
“half listened” is foreground, and the fact that they had done it so
many times is background explanation to that.
I don't think we can adequately judge the efficacy of these
decisions outside the discourse context.
Craig
On 2/11/2011 10:59 AM, STAHLKE, HERBERT F wrote:
>
> The past perfect is a compound verb form made up of the past tense of
> the perfect aspect auxiliary “have” tog*ether with the past participle
> of the verb. It’s meanings vary with context, as is typical of
> auxiliary verb constructions.*
>
> **
>
> *Herb*
>
> *From:*Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] *On Behalf Of *Brad Johnston
> *Sent:* Friday, February 11, 2011 10:16 AM
> *To:* [log in to unmask]
> *Subject:* Re: On meanings of the past perfect
>
> Herb,
>
> Thank you. I'm glad you think something I pulled from the BYU Corpus
> is worth considering. I thank you, again, for bringing that corpus to
> my attention.
>
> The response I most want from you is a reply to any one of the several
> recent emails in which I asked you to please tell me what the past
> perfect is. "Show me what you would write on the board if a student
> asked you what it is. Your answer needs to be crisp enough that they
> can copy it in their notebooks and carry it out the door when the bell
> rings."
>
> You waxed melodic in a variety of different ways and down a variety of
> different paths but I still need to know, to make what you say below
> make sense, what is the past perfect? How can any of us consider your
> thoughts on the Salinger quote without knowing your answer to that
> simple question?
>
> What is it?
>
> .brad.11feb11.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *From:*"STAHLKE, HERBERT F" <[log in to unmask]>
> *To:* [log in to unmask]
> *Sent:* Fri, February 11, 2011 1:24:22 AM
> *Subject:* On meanings of the past perfect
>
> I usually don’t respond to Brad’s past perfect posts, but once in a
> while he asks a question worth considering. In his latest post he
> provides a list of past perfects from the BYU Corpus that he contends
> are incorrect and asks if there is another rule involved. There is.
> Let’s take just one of his examples.
>
> The Treasury Department figures showed it soared to $82.7 billion.
> Economists *<**had predicted**> predicted* a number closer to $30 billion.
>
> The status of the information in the second sentence changes when the
> verb is changed from past perfect to simple past. The foregrounded
> information is in the first sentence, and the second sentence is
> background. If the simple past is used in the second sentence it is
> no longer clear what the status of the information is.
>
> In addition to the time referring function that Brad recognizes, the
> past perfect also has a discourse function that it shares with other
> aspectual verb structures, including the present perfect and the
> progressive. To take a simple case, and one that other members have
> commented on recently, the compound tenses contrast in narrative
> discourse with the simple tenses. Narrative writers use simple past
> and simple present to move the action forward, and they use perfect
> and progressive aspects to provide background information. Here’s an
> example from Salinger’s /Nine Stories./
>
> //
>
> I remember a significant incident that occurred just a day or two
> after Bobby and I arrived in New York. I *was standing* up in a very
> crowded Lexington Avenue bus, *holding on* to the enamel pole near the
> driver’s seat, buttocks to buttocks with the chap behind me. For a
> number of blocks the driver*had repeatedly given *those of us bunched
> up near the front door a curt order to “step to the rear of the
> vehicle.” Some of us *had tried* to oblige him. Some of us
> *hadn’t*. At length, with a red light in his favor, /the harassed man
> swung around in his seat and looked up at me/, just behind him. At
> nineteen, I was a hatless type, with a flat, black, not particularly
> clean, Continental-type pompadour over a badly broken-out inch of
> forehead. /He addressed me in a lowered, an almost prudent tone of
> voice/. /“All right, buddy,” he said, “let’s move it/.” It was the
> “buddy,” I think, that did it. Without even *bothering* to bend over
> a little--that is, to keep the conversation at least as private as
> he*’d *kept it—/I informed him, in French, that he was a rude, stupid,
> overbearing imbecile, and that he’d never know how much I detested
> him. Then, rather elated, I stepped to the rear of the vehicle./
>
> Salinger, J. D. 1953. /Nine Stories/. New York: Bantam Books. P. 130.
>
> In this passage I’ve put the verbs with aspectual auxiliaries in bold,
> and the clauses that carry the narrative forward in italics. I’ve
> included in boldface two participial phrases; like aspectual
> auxiliaries they are used to provide background information. There
> are four instances of past perfect, and the first four could be
> replaced with simple pasts. However, the narrative would then
> change. Giving the curt order, obliging, and not obliging would then
> all become foregrounded and would be part of the narrative line.
> Clearly, that would weaken the narrative, and Salinger is a better
> writer than that, so he chose to background those pieces of
> information. The past perfect in this passage functions to provide
> background information rather than to specify a particular time
> reference, although it does that as well.
>
> It’s impossible to discuss background, foregrounding, and narrative
> line and the grammatical structures they use when dealing with a
> single sentence. These a discourse functions and require coherent
> passages to show how they are expressed.
>
> It is, by the way, an interesting and instructive exercise to have
> students find passages and apply this sort of analysis to them to
> distinguish backgrounding and foregrounding.
>
> Herb
>
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