Thank you, Gretchen, for the praise of my workshop. I'm glad it was
helpful for you.

As to evidence for disappearance of past perfect, it's anecdotal. I
notice my students using simple past in many instances when I would use
past perfect, in both their speech and writing. I have heard a few
examples from other spoken sources as well, such as broadcast news. I
haven't done a serious study of it. Biber et al.'s study shows that it's
not terribly robust across the board, but that may be because fewer
instances in which it is needed show up in genres other than fiction.
I'm not surprised that edited forms of English such as fiction, news
media, etc. have a lot of past perfect. The written form of a language
is usually more conservative than the spoken form.

Fiction is also a more likely venue for past perfect, since so much of
it is narrative, in which ordering of events is important. So high
numbers there aren't surprising. I wonder if reading Harry Potter will
support the retention or restoration of past perfect in kids?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johanna Rubba   Assistant Professor, Linguistics
English Department, California Polytechnic State University
One Grand Avenue  • San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Tel. (805)-756-2184  •  Fax: (805)-756-6374 • Dept. Phone.  756-259
• E-mail: [log in to unmask] •  Home page: http://www.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
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"Understanding is a lot like sex; it's got a practical purpose,
but that's not why people do it normally"  -            Frank  Oppenheimer
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