Paralelling the decline in use of the perfect is a redefinition of the past perfect.  I hear, and read, students using the past perfect as a remote past, so you'll find contrasts like

This morning I went to the gym.

vs.

Last weekend I had gone to the gym.

In the latter usage there is no event mentioned in the discourse that going to the gym occurred before.  It simply marks an earlier past than the simple past and doesn't require a clause to compare with.  Lot's of languages do this, and I just read a paper by one of our doctoral grads, Audrey Mbeje, arguing that the choice among such tenses in her language Xhosa is subject to the speaker's sense of immediate relevance.

English appears to be changing.

Herb 


-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Johanna Rubba
Sent: Sun 2/17/2008 1:44 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Context matters - continued
 
I agree with Brad's insertion of past perfect into the quoted  
paragraph. It seems to me that, in general, use of perfect tenses is  
slowly declining, although this is a completely subjective  
impression. I hear students say things like "I ate lunch already"  
instead of "I have eaten lunch already,"  indicating decline in use  
of the present perfect as well as the past perfect. Maybe there has  
always been variation in these uses, maybe not. Perhaps Herb can  
enlighten us on this point.

Dr. Johanna Rubba, Ph. D.
Associate Professor, Linguistics
Linguistics Minor Advisor
English Dept.
Cal Poly State University San Luis Obispo
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Ofc. tel. : 805-756-2184
Dept. tel.: 805-756-2596
Dept. fax: 805-756-6374
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
URL: cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba

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