Bruce,

 

I use the same strict definition of “tense” as you do – but at the same time, I can’t help but think of that sense of mild annoyance I get when someone tries to tell me I’m not allowed to use the word “bug” for spiders (long before biologists adopted a specialized meaning of the term, “bug” referred to crawly things). My English ed. students, I think, have the same reaction when I start talking about tense – it really boils down to a dispute over who “owns” the definition of a word, and of course, no one really does unless trademark law in involved. I can’t really blame my students if they quietly decide that the general public has not officially granted linguists the right to redefine terms of usage that existed long before there were linguists. We perhaps should have made up a completely new term, but that trick never goes over well except in science fiction (“I will refer to the set of affixes marking these categories directly on verbs as florsh”). There are no good solutions.

 

I would have no problem whatsoever criticizing a linguist for using the folk meaning of tense if s/he’s writing for an audience of linguists (not that that ever happens – try it on a comprehensive exam and you’re looking at an extra semester’s work at minimum and at maximum an enforced change of career plans), but grammarians writing for the general public may not feel that they wield power of redefinition, and their editors may enforce the folk definition anyway.  We can argue that English doesn’t treat present and past the same as it does various flavors of “future-ish,” and that progressive and perfect are separate issues from present vs. past, etc., and back all that up with tons of evidence. Those distinctions are relevant regardless of what we call them (and it’s not like major English grammarians like Curme and Jespersen failed to notice this stuff). We can’t, however, demand that everyone accept our labels for all that, although we can certainly try to sweet-talk people into it.

 

---- Bill Spruiell

 

 

 

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”)  

 

 

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. 

 

 

 

"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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