I have to agree with Bob Yates that this statement of Geoff Layton's is disturbing.

Geoff Layton:
>    The recent posts on verb tenses, as well as the one just
> preceding, made me realize all over again what a difficult, but gloriously
> unpredictable this language of ours is.  I think that the group has shown
> that no one really ever masters it.

The present perfect tense-aspect construction is one of the more
difficult points of English grammar to understand and explain in a
metalinguistic sense; that is, being able to articulate the principles
that determine its use has proven challenging even to advanced
linguistic theorists (though progress has been made). But this is not
the same thing as the ability to use these principles
subconsciously--adult speakers of English do this unproblematically. As
Bob points out, there must be principles that determine (and therefore
predict) its use, or we would all be casting around using incorrect
tense/aspects a lot of the time. We don't. If children are having
trouble using this construction in their writing, I would look for
sources other than unpredictability of the construction. When do
children master this construction in speech? To what extent is this a
problem of learning the structure of written language and principles for
structuring coherent written texts, rather than subconsciously mastering
the rules for use of present perfect?

It also disturbs me for someone to express the belief that 'no one
really ever masters' the English language. One must, again, be very
careful about whether one is speaking of metalinguistic or linguistic
abilities--abilities to explain how the language works vs. abilities to
just function in it. In the latter sense, all native speakers 'master'
the language to the extent that their environment allows. In the former
sense, however--being able to explain every detail of English
gramar--well, linguists have been working on that for some time now, and
a great deal is known. Yet a great deal remains to be uncovered.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
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