Bob,

I wonder if the writer of that comment was referring to a phenomenon I see
with my high school students: the past perfect is being used (at least in
writing, but I think also in some conversation) as if it were the simple
past. I know that when I see it misused that way in writing, and I seem to
be seeing it more and more lately, it "grates" on me, too.

I suppose that if the past perfect begins to be mistaken for the simple past
too often it will, in a sense, "disappear" as a separate form by getting
mixed up as something it is not.  I'm not expressing this as clearly as I
would like, but I think you might know what I mean. Has anyone else seen
this happening?

Paul E. Doniger
The Gilbert School

----- Original Message -----
From: Bob Yates <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2000 5:20 PM
Subject: Are we losing the past perfect?


> Before I talk about the past perfect, I want to comment on the
> subjunctive. One of the differences between American English and British
> English is the fact that we in North America use the subjunctive much
> more frequently than those across the pond.  See A comprehensive grammar
> of English p. 1013.
>
> Now, I sure wish I knew what evidence there is for the following claim
> about the disappearance of the past perfect in English.
>
> > Many aspects of the current changes underway in English grate on me,
> > such as loss of the past perfect;
>
> Biber et al. (1999), Longman grammar of spoken and written English is
> discussion of the structures of English based on a corpus of over 40
> million words from both conversation and written texts.  (Unfortunately,
> they have no frequency reports on the subjunctive indexed.)
>
> On page 461, they show a distribution of the past perfect and present
> perfect in conversation, fiction, news, and academic texts.  In
> conversation, the present perfect occurs approximately 6000 times
> /million words.  The past perfect less than 800 times.  However, in
> fiction, the past perfect occurs more that 6000 times /million words and
> the present perfect occurs less than 3500 times /million words. (I am
> interpreting a bar graph.)
>
> For evidence of the frequency of the past perfect in fiction, see any of
> the Harry Potter books being read by millions of kids in the States.
> You will find on almost any page a number of past perfect
> constructions.
>
> On page 469 Biber et al. note that the past perfect occurs with time
> adverbials in a greater percentage than the simple past tense.  Past
> perfect often occurs in dependent clauses.  Finally, these two factors
> account for 70% of all occurrences of the past perfect tense.
>
> It is possible that the past perfect may only become a form that occurs
> in writing.  This would not be unusual for a language.  Both spoken
> French and German rarely use what would be the English equivalent of the
> simple past tense.  Especially for French, the simple past is almost
> exclusively a written form.
>
> However, I wish I knew the evidence for the claim that the past perfect
> is disappearing.  I think that Biber et al. show that in fiction it
> isn't.
>
> Bob Yates
> Central Missouri State University
>
> However, I sure would like to know the evidence which shows that the
> past perfect is disappearing.
>