Brian,
An entirely reasonable criticism. I am, in fact, working on a longer piece on meanings and functions of the past perfect, which I hope to post in a few days. Limiting the discussion to the past perfect is a bit constraining, since the past perfect is not a unitary construct. It's a combination of a specific tense and a specific aspect, which means has deictic both with respect to time reference and with respect to discourse. At the same time, however, I don't want to get into a comprehensive discussion of tense, aspect, and deixis, which has been handled in whole volumes.
Deixis is, however, a good entry point for expanding on my almost dismissive summary comment that you rightly found unsatisfying. We have to ask what the writer is pointing to in time and in discourse by using a particular instance of past perfect, which we can't tell without sufficient context.
This is still, regretfully, unsatisfying, but I'll post more on the matter in a few days.
Herb
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of O'Sullivan, Brian P
Sent: Friday, February 11, 2011 12:05 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: On meanings of the past perfect
Herb,
Thanks for that backgrounding and foregrounding exerise; I think I might try that next week in my advanced composition course.
By the way, I have to admit--even in that course, which has some fairly advanced undergrads in it, I'd anticipate some blank looks if I wrote "its meanings very with context" as the only meaning- or function-related part of a definition of the past perfect. That level of generality might not give student writers enough to go on. And yet, of course, you're right; its meanings do vary with context--and I wouldn't want to be reductive.
So, for an audience like my class, do you think it would be appropriate to add, after "...vary with context," something like "but it normally indicates that the action occurred before some other action or point in time known to the reader"? With that as a kind of basic definition and point of departure, maybe the "discourse function" that you describe could be discussed as a special case or nuance?
Bian
________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of STAHLKE, HERBERT F [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, February 11, 2011 10:59 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: On meanings of the past perfect
The past perfect is a compound verb form made up of the past tense of the perfect aspect auxiliary "have" together 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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