I enter this conversation once again because I feel there are
peripheral issues (the way we use adjectives) that are worth talking
about. I may have inadvertently caused some confusion in my earlier
post by misunderstanding Brad, although it is still not clear in my
mind if Brad is objecting to "remote past" as a concept or a tense. I
recopy his words below:

I think 'the past' is past. Everything from the beginning of time until
this moment is "past". If you think grammar teachers should teach
something called 'the remote past', I hope you will illustrate how you
think it works, within the context of 'Standard English', which is what is
taught, and hopefully learned, at this time in the history of the
English-speaking world.

I talked to him an hour ago. I talked to him yesterday. I talked to him a
week ago. I talked to him two weeks ago. I had talked to him three weeks
ago? because everything longer ago that two weeks ago is 'remote past'? Or
is everything before the Battle of Hastings 'remote'? or before the birth
of Christ? When did it stop being 'remote' and start being 'past'?

    It seems to me from those two paragraphs that Brad does realize that
not everything in the past happens at once. Maybe we can broker a mild
agreement. Terms like "recent" and "remote" may be hard to pin down
outside of context, but that is similar to what happens with all our
gradable adjectives. A short center is a tall point guard. A big mouse
is much smaller than a small elephant.
    I thought about the sympathy we rightly feel for the Canadian skater
whose mother died just days before she took to the ice. The fact that 
a death occured in the "recent past" is highly important to us. The
fact that my mother died in 1985 doesn't elicit the same sympathy, nor
should it. The death is much more remote.
   We use qualifiers like "so", "somewhat", and "very" to finetune this in
context. Saying that it is "subjective" isn't the same as saying it is
unimportant. It is, for better or worse, the way we understand the
world and the way we share that understanding through language.
   We have a number of resources for making the past more or less paster,
if I can paraphrase Brad. I would be terrified to think that a high
school teacher would be telling students that everything past is
equally past. Imagine that in a history class. I don't thin that is
Brad's position. The question really revolves around how we would use
our resources--past perfect is one--to make the relative pastness
(remoteness) of an event clear when we feel it is in our interest to do
so. Many of us use the past perfect in ways we feel natural and useful
and are surprised to have it called an "error."
   I don't think of Brad as trying to protect the world against the
invention of a new tense. As I see it, he is saying that the vast
majority of language users, including our best writers and
publications, and all our grammar texts are wrong. If you slant that
differently, the vast majority of language users, including our best
writers and publications, and all our grammar texts, have a position
different from Brad's. He keeps on posting new examples of "errors" as
though he were writing to people who agree with him.
   Herb's clear and cogent explanations defend the mainstream view very
well. I don't need to repeat them.
   I would hope that we could have thoughtful, substantive discussions
about these issues. That may mean shaking off the impossible task of
finding agreement with Brad and discussing it with each other. Too
often, the question "should we talk about past perfect" gets confused
with "should we try once again to respond to Brad."
   Is past perfect sometimes used in ways that seem superfluous? Do
textbooks occssionally give examples that seem artificial? I think so,
but Brad's position makes those very difficult points to make.

Craig



> On Fri, 2/26/10, Terry,Tina <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>  
> Here are some resources re: English verb tenses that I use for my
> students:
>  
>
> http://esl.about.com/library/weekly/aa011201a.htm
>  
> - - - - - - - - - - - -
>  
> Example of past perfect continuous:
>  
> The house had been being painted for over a month before they began to
> decorate the interior.
>  
> Wow, Tina, I hope you use this to make students aware of how many
> incorrect examples of the past perfect are out there.
>  
> "There is at least one had error on any grammar website or in any grammar
> textbook you can name."
>  
> Thanks, Tina.
>  
> .brhad.sat.27feb10.
>  
> This reminds me of a German lady who learned English as a second language
> from a person who learned English as a second language, and who professes
> to show proper English usage on her website. She gets downright snarly
> when any of her many errors are revealed. She would accept "had been being
> painted" without a murmur.
>  
> And, needless to say, the house must be the object of the action but hey,
> let's not quibble. As long as the sentence is messed up, let's let it be
> really messed up. Sorry, I can't turn off the italics. That's what blue
> type does to my computer.
>  
>
>
>
>
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