It looks to me that Mr. Barr was considering his opening statement, "Only a
few days ago, . . . *was* unsure . . ."  set in the past.  The next
paragraph is apparently meant to describe the situation obtaining previous
to these few days ago.  The he seems to be setting the next scene with
the statement, "Less than two weeks later, Iowa State *lost* its coach, . .
. "  I must agree that the simple past could have been effective and
enlivenig, but would leave the sequencing of events up to the careful
interpretation of adverbs and context.
The theory about people actually thinking of a past an then changing it in
their mind to another syntactic form places syntax above semantics in the
composition process.  I think that the syntactic process is largely
subconscious to most writers without sophisticated grammatical training.
On Thu, May 6, 2010 at 6:45 AM, Brad Johnston <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>    While I'm looking for the surround of the Nicholas Sparks quote,
> consider this *complete* item from the Washington Post.
>
> Recruiting Insider - Princeton Day's McKnight says he's headed to Iowa
> State.
>     Only a few days ago, Princeton Day Academy forward Eric McKnight was
> unsure of his college plans.
>     "I'm open right now," McKnight said after playing in the preliminary
> game for the Capital Classic, listing Indiana, Penn State, Rutgers and
> George Washington as schools that *had* *shown* interest in him but adding
> that none had offered a scholarship.
>     Less than two weeks later, Iowa State lost its coach, Todd McDermott,
> to Creighton and subsequently hired Fred Hoiberg. While the Cyclones *had*
> *shown* mild interest in the 6-foot-nine McKnight, a native of Raleigh,
> N.C., earlier in the process, things suddenly heated up, according to
> Princeton Day Coach Van Whitfield.
>     Now, McKnight is bound for Ames.
> ~ Josh Barr
>
> ~~~~~~~
>
>  We know that people sometimes put 'had' in front of past tense verbs and
> we know that when they try to put 'had' in front of an irregular past
> tense verb, 'had showed' doesn't sound right so they use 'had shown' instead
> of 'showed'. It's called 'forcing the iregular past participle'.
>
> Why else did Josh Barr write what he wrote?
>
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