Rodney,
Photo Caption, from the Washington Post: Soldiers taking part in the 13-mile
Michigan Fallen Soldier March enter Great Lakes National Cemetery in Holly,
Mich. The walk, in memory of those who have died while serving in the military,
began at a Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Linden, Mich.
You won't see anything wrong with this caption, since you only care about what
people actually do say and not what they should say, what they should have
been taught in grammar school. Right?
I don't want you to toss and turn all night worrying about what might be the
matter, so I'll tell you. The word 'have' is in front of the past tense verb
'died'. It doesn't belong there.
People DO put 'had' in front of past tense verbs and people ALSO put 'have' in
front of past tense verbs. That's because English teachers often do not know any
better, because they read and heed descriptive texts that argue that anything
goes. Descriptivists record all the weird sounds that humans make and then try
to explain them, try to make them fit a pattern, even if they don't make sense.
~~~~~~~
That was yesterday. This is today, also from the Washington Post."Kevin Kline
jumped from a sedan to greet fans cordoned off on the far side of the street;
(sic) he and Stephen Root said they'd done plays at Ford's back in the day."
That's what the Post gets for following a dumb rule about reporting speech as
something other than what actually happened, i.e, Kline and Root said they did
plays at Ford's back in the day, regardless of when they said it.
"President Obama said he hoped the Israelis .." makes no sense unless the writer
knows that Obama doesn't hope it anymore. If he hoped it yesterday, and hopes it
today, and expects to hope it tomorrow, the word that must be used to describe
accurately what happened is "hopes". "The president said he hopes the
Israelis .."
The next time someone writes a descriptive grammar of the English language, they
should make it clear -- in big, bold, over-sized, screaming type -- that the
book describes the language of the streets. It does NOT attempt to define rules
by which the language makes sense and by which most of the people most of the
time have the greatest likelihood of understanding one another. The caveat
should be at the beginning of each chapter, so the reader will be constantly
reminded.
The "anything goes" of descriptive grammar has its place but it will never put a
man on the moon or argue a case before the Supreme Court.
.brad.21apr11.
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