Bill, Craig, Herb, et al.,
I suppose it's like the biologist who has introduced the species of true bugs. At that point she avoids using the term "bug" to refer to just any creepy-crawly thing and even if she did, the context would make clear her reference. After introducing the species of tense, I would avoid using the term to refer to just any verb phrase construction. It would clearly thereafter not apply it to modals, just like "bug" would not be applied to spiders and many other insects. Another analogy would be "temperature." We can speak of this quality when we are referring to great groups of molecules, but when we want to refer to a single molecule, it no longer makes sense. We are obliged to talk of velocity at that level. In most grammars "tense" refers to a form, not to a structure. If we are talking semantics, it seems other terms could be more useful. Since that field of study is so full of ad hoc terms, perhaps "chronicity" would be as good as or better than many others. At least it would clarify a question such as, "What is the tense of 'would'?"
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
Sent: Sunday, April 26, 2009 8:05 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: cutting the pear in half
> Bill, Bruce, Herb,
I don't really want to make an argument for traditional terminology in
verb phrases. But I do want to build on the observation that the
modals work differently than auxiliaries that mainly provide tense. As
you know, they ground the verb phrase in attitudinal notions about
desirability, possibility, obligation, and the like. What present or
past tense tends to do is ground the verb phrase in historical time.
"Should we go to the movies?" "Yes, we did" would seem a nonsequitur.
From there, I have a problem designating a modal as carrying tense
solely on the basis of the past history of the word. What is the tense,
for example, of "must"? How about "ought to"? How about "may" and
"might"? "Shall and should"? I have asked those questions of classes
before and never have gotten anything like a clear consensus. "Can" and
"could" come the closest. If the average language user is totally
unaware of the history of the word, does it really make sense to call
it past tense solely on the basis of that history?
It is not just folk linguistics to say that modals have somewhat
floated free of their earlier meanings. They have grammaticalized into
different roles.
But maybe I'm misunderstanding the conversation.
Many people, like Brad, seem to care mainly if something is correct. My
main concern is how it functions. It's fine with me to say that "would"
should be considered past tense because it was once the past tense form
of "will". When it is used conditionally, though, it tends to assert a
different kind of relationship to will, which asserts certainty. A
writer/speaker chooses nuances of meaning (grammatical and not just
lexical) from the choice of these forms. And these choices are very
different from the meaning choices that come with normal present and
past tense.
There are theories of grammar that believe separating grammar from
function (and cognition) is a mistake. And students that I deal with
are grateful for a view of language that helps them use language in the
world, not just classify it for a test.
Again, though, observation about what's happening is critical. We can
agree to disagree about how we label things. And new labels are
sometimes needed to bring another perspective into public light.
Is "will" a future auxiliary? Still present tense?
I really don't want to reawaken old arguments. But I don't think my
views are naive. The relationship between modal forms and time is very
complicated and tends to differ from term to term. I think it is at
least reasonable to propose that they have floated free of the normal
system of tense, some more than others. As a matter of fact, I think
anyone trying to describe the language would treat modals as special in
some ways. The question might be if they are special enough to pull
them out of the category of tense. Surely we can see either choice as
reasonable.
Craig>
> Bruce,
>
>
>
> Since the meaning of words is a matter of convention, we can create a
> careful, productive set of distinctions / categories for the English
> verb system and then create any set of labels for them. Pointing out
> that linguists don't own the copyright to "tense" doesn't entail that we
> have to reset our view of the verb system to 1872; it's an observation
> about the problems in attempting to foist a new definition on a large
> speech community that already has an established one, and has no reason
> to do what we tell them. Using a new term like "chronicity" or even
> "florsh" instead of the narrow sense of "tense" would let us do the same
> things. I honestly don't think a room full of veteran K-12 teachers
> would view my shiny linguistics doctorate as giving me the automatic
> right to impose my definitions on terms that have been in use in K-12
> practice for four hundred years. We can quite rightly point out that
> "tense" is vague, and that we need to talk about more precise
> distinctions, but they can just as rightfully say something like, "so
> make up a new one and stop trying to steal this one - what kind of
> linguist can't make up a new word?" It's a marketing problem, not a
> scientific one.
>
>
>
> "Phone" vs. "Phoneme" makes a good contrasting case, since the pair was
> invented by linguists. "Speech sound" is horribly vague, since it can
> refer to what you actually heard or instead to what you think you heard,
> etc. But we didn't just adopt a narrowed use for "speech sound" and
> insist everyone agree with us (this was, by the way, before people used
> "phone" for telephones, and the contexts keep them separate anyway).
> When a nonlinguist grabs "phoneme" and runs somewhere odd with it, the
> average observer will grant the linguist the rhetorical high ground if
> the linguist kvetches about it, since we're generally acknowledged as
> "owning" the term. ADS-L's Spelling Reform Guy will ignore us, but he's
> special in so many other ways too.
>
>
>
>
>
> Bill Spruiell
>
>
>
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bruce Despain
> Sent: Friday, April 24, 2009 9:16 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: cutting the pear in half
>
>
>
> I think the sentence is grammatically acceptable as it stands.
>
>
>
> The description I gave was in response to the question about what the
> tense was. The point of my soapbox exposition was supposed to be that
> the term "tense" is usually so vague that a careful response would have
> to clarify its reference. We can talk about bugs, but until there is a
> more developed nomenclature for them, the differences between the
> species keep having to be pointed out. In the context of a discussion
> on the grammar of verbs in English, I think it is important to get the
> terms straight. Of course, if your theory of grammar does not
> distinguish between form and meaning, my speech would probably not have
> been very enlightening. If your grammar simply adopts the terms for
> certain word forms in Latin or Greek and applies them to the syntactic
> forms of their translations into English, then the distinction between
> words and phrases cannot be maintained. Sorry, but I think that these
> distinctions are important in the study of grammar.
>
>
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Brad Johnston
> [[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Friday, April 24, 2009 3:01 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: cutting the pear in half
>
> You (both) have left me in the dust.
>
>
>
> Is the sentence grammatically correct, "We would have had to go 'dutch'
> anyway"?
>
>
>
> .brad.24apr09.
>
>
> --- On Fri, 4/24/09, Bruce Despain <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>
>
> Craig,
>
>
>
> I agree with your comments, except in the one point, which we have
> discussed - terminology. I take "tense" as strictly a label for verb
> forms and "time" a label for meaning. Verbs definitely exhibit an
> active fault line through the connection between tense and time, where
> the modal auxiliaries seem to have broken quite free. The other
> auxiliaries seem to maintain the boundary between form and meaning
> ("have" vs. "had" and "is" vs. "was"), hence the discussion relating to
> the "past perfect tense." I like the idea of "finite grounding" to
> refer to something that often happens in the verb phrase, but I don't
> think we can always point there for it. As you imply the past tense
> form of the modals seems to supply the subjunctive alias conditional,
> which meaning is still maintained by a different form of "be" ("is" vs.
> "were")
>
>
>
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
> Sent: Friday, April 24, 2009 10:38 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: cutting the pear in half
>
>
>
> Bruce,
> For the most part, I like your analysis. "Would" is definitely a
> preterit historically, which opens up the question of whether it has now
> floated free of that history. At any rate, without the perfect aspect
> (as in "would have to go dutch"), it may well refer to something that
> hasn't occured yet. "If he doesn't come, we would have to go dutch." It
> adds a conditional sense. The sense of past time in this phrase comes
> from the perfect aspect. "We would have had to go dutch" clearly relates
> to a hypothetical reality for which possibility has passed. In "would
> have to", the "have" is not related to perfect aspect, but to an
> additional modal meaning. For that reason, "would had to" is
> ungrammatical. The "tense" (finite grounding) can only happen once. When
> "would" refers to past time, it generally does so as repeated or
> habitual action. "I would leave for work at eight." It isn't used that
> way for conditional reference (without aspect).
> I tend to look at "have to" and "had to" as periphrastic modals (very
> close to must.) Ordinarily, the "have" or "had" would designate tense,
> but you are right about this one--the "had" is past participle to
> "have". "I could have a V-8" (currently possible) means something
> different from "I could have had a V-8", where the possibility is now
> over. But in neither case ("could have had a V-8" or "would have had to
> go dutch") does the past time come from the modal.
> I'm also a little nervous about calling "would" past tense of the
> auxiliary, since it doesn't pair up with "will" very neatly as just a
> time change option. But we have had that discussion previously. I offer
> it, not as argument, but as alternative view.
> It's hard to talk about this stuff without it seeming complicated.
> And I think we are observing the same elephant, just differing on how we
> want to name what we are seeing.
>
> Craig
>
> Bruce Despain wrote:
>
> I think it is unfortunate that there are so many grammarians for which
> "tense" is attributed to such a great deal of different forms and
> syntactic structures. "Verb tense" is literally the form that a verb
> takes as the main verb in a sentence. There are four verbs in the reply
> in question: "would," "have," "had," and "go." We recognize that the
> form "would" is a variant of "will." This form is historically a
> preterit, which is often found in sentences referring to past time:
> "Yesterday I would go, but not today." That is the main verb in the
> sentence, so that is the answer to Brad's question.
>
>
>
> For many grammarians, that answer is not adequate. What about all the
> other verbs in the verb phrase? Aren't they participating in making a
> "tense"? Indeed, the English language does have multiple ways to build
> structures using multiple verbs to express other nuances of meaning
> besides time or tense. These dimensions of meaning have acquired other
> terminology to distinguish them from tense, such as aspect and mood.
> But their correspondence is not to a simple form of the verb, but to a
> periphrastic structure containing several verbs.
>
>
>
> Let's see how the verb phrase is built up of smaller pieces and see how
> the "tense" has been shifted across other forms. The main verb, as far
> as carrying content is concerned, is the infinitive form "go" following
> a marker "to" (related historically to a preposition). "Infinitive"
> means that it does not carry tense. It is a noun form called a verbal.
> The phrase "have to go" is a way of expressing an obligation. The verb
> "have" is also an auxiliary. In the phrase in question it is in the
> form of another verbal, an adjective form called a participle. The
> participle "had" is not a finite form of the verb either, so it can't
> carry tense. There are two participles in English and this one has the
> name of "past participle." It is there because of another auxiliary
> "have" as in "I have almost finished." This auxiliary "have" forms a
> phrase with the past participle to express an aspect called "perfect."
> We could call it an aspectual auxiliary. This is not tense either,
> though many still refer to it by its corresponding Latin form "perfect
> tense." The form "would" is a modal auxiliary and must be used with
> another verb whose form is infinitive. That is why the "have" that
> follows it is the infinitive (no tense). Therefore, the tense falls on
> the modal auxiliary. The verb phrase consists of a string of 5 words:
> Would (past tense of modal aux) + Have (inf. of aspectual aux) + Had
> (p.part. of periphrastic obligative verb) + To (prep. as inf. marker) +
> go (inf. of main verb). [Actually, I suppose, "go 'dutch'" is the
> main verb -- an adverb compounded with the verb "go," but this analysis
> gets into constructional grammar.]
>
>
>
> I believe it was Chomsky in 1957 who first suggested a formal
> description of the verb phrase with these kinds of forms ordered
> rigorously with each part optionally manifested but conditioning the
> form of the part to follow. The terminology and instruction in such
> terms seem to have lagged somewhat behind.
>
>
>
>
>
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]
> <[log in to unmask]" target="_blank">http:[log in to unmask]>
> ] On Behalf Of Brad Johnston
> Sent: Friday, April 24, 2009 8:13 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> <[log in to unmask]" target="_blank">http:[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: cutting the pear in half
>
>
>
> "I'm sorry I can't make it."
>
>
>
> "That's O.K. We would have had to go 'dutch' anyway."
>
>
>
> What's the verb tense in the reply?
>
>
>
> .brad.24apr09.
>
>
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