After suggesting to Brad that he provide some context for his sentences, which he rejected, I haven’t paid much attention to what he’s posted.  He has, however posted a persistent query as to whether the past perfect is the past of the present perfect.  Asked in this way, it’s rather like asking, “Is the cat black?” in a context where there’s no cat around.  The only legitimate answer to such a questions is “There’s no way to know.”  I suspect he doesn’t see the subtlety of tense, aspect, and, probably, modality and how context-dependent the choices among them are, not to mention how much they may depend on the knowledge and beliefs of the speaker.  The fact that the sentences are not original to him, as he has stated more than once, does not relieve him of the responsibility to know what it is he’s surveying and to recast the survey so that it has some chance of producing useful data.  Unfortunately, we have no idea what Brad wants to do with this information, which is usually enough in itself to make me reluctant to answer.  Brad has asked that we not lecture him, but I don’t know how to help him make his survey meaningful without doing some explaining.

Herb

To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list"

Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/