Bill, Herb,
   I found myself agreeing with both of you and still agreeing with myself.
   I think the big enemy here is not that modals aren't well classified,
but that they aren't in a typical English teacher's radar. Students
come to college without knowing what a modal is. They simply haven't
had any attention paid to it. I know, because I ask, that that is true
of students in New York state, whether coming out of the city or
upstate or Long Island. They know--or think they know--what tense is,
but modals have never been defined or described in their schooling, at
least not in a way that any of them seem to remember.
   Part of what I think it's useful to talk about is that the modals seem
to defy the expectations of tense. "Ought to" , for example, ostensibly
past tense, is closer to "am supposed to" than "was supposed to." If
you want to add a past time flavor to "will", you go to "was going to".
"Should", supposedly past tense, is closer to "am supposed to", a
present tense form.
   To me, it's a little like calling a fence post a tree because it used
to be a tree. It seems less cumbersone to say the modals have somewhat
floated free of each other and floated free of what we normally think
of as tense. But I think we all agree on that as an observation. They
have been grammaticalized into very important roles, and it is the
importance of those roles that should lead us to pay a good deal of
attention to them. Whether it may rain or should rain or could rain or
will rain matters quite a bit.
   Whether you start with them as in the category of tense or outside the
category of tense, you need to take it back somewhat as you explain why
that's not completely true. If we agree on the need to explore them in
some detail, the classification difference loses importance.
   I amn still reading CC Fries and am taken by his statement that he want
to educate students, not just train them, as a reason to tell them the
truth about language and not just a simplified form of it. I think
Scott said it well also in a recent post.

 Craig, Bruce, et al.:
>
> Again, I'm not arguing for using the traditional, broad sense of
> "tense." I just think we should openly acknowledge that we don't "own"
> the word itself, and that our specialized use of it is a kind of
> lesser-of-multiple-evils kludge.
>
> I was partly reacting to Bruce's use of the word "literally" in his
> initial post (although I don't think he meant it this way, it can
> *imply* that there is a "true" definition of tense, and that other
> definitions are false in some kind of substantive way). Definitions
> aren't true or false in the normal sense; they're a kind of assertion
> that a potential audience either accepts or doesn't.  If different
> speech communities use different definitions, there's no way to say only
> one of those definitions is "true." Attempting to do so is equivalent to
> saying, "my speech community matters, but yours doesn't." That doesn't,
> of course, entail that we can't ask students to use words with their
> accepted meanings, even if they're discipline-specific accepted meanings
> (as long as the context *is* that discipline). We just can't confuse
> "accepted" with "true." Conventions aren't true or false.
>
>
> Bill Spruiell
> Dept. of English
> Central Michigan University
>
> -----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 10:05 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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