John,

What I make of it is that you are exactly right.

You also demonstrate the desirability of thinking of the past tense as the default when the question is whether the past tense or the past perfect tense is correct.

A grammar-text author recently wrote to me, "If you think 'I had traveled' is incorrect, how do I correct it within the context of the chart?"

I replied that his chart is correct by virtue of the three dots he has after the phrase, which indicates that it is not complete in itself. That is as it should be. If an example is started with a capital letter and ended with a period, it makes it seem to be a sentence when it is not.

He continued, "Is there a way to complete the phrase "I had traveled" in order to create a past perfect tense?"

I replied, "By the time I reached the frontier in my ox cart, I had travelled for six weeks in the bloody contraption without a drink nor a decent meal. Never again (fragment, dependent on context for meaning)."

The point of all this is that the same way context rules, the lack of context also rules. The example "The bird had flown away." is incorrect because it does not have the necessary supporting context. "The bird flew away" doesn't need it.

Your bird has context to support the past perfect, my bird does not.

Nice to hear from the Silent Majority.

.brad.16oct09.

--- On Thu, 10/15/09, john whicker <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

What would you make of the following?

Yesterday, I saw a cardinal sitting on my back fence. I quickly grabbed my camera, but by the time I got outside to take a picture, the bird had flown away.

In this context, the past tense "flew" would not correctly convey the meaning because the birds action took place at a time in the past prior to the time of another action, which also occurred in the past. "Flew" would indicate that the bird flew away when "I got outside" rather than before. This, as I understand it, is the purpose of the past perfect.

John Whicker

Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2009
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: The bird flew away
To: [log in to unmask]

Copy to ATEG of a recent off-list message -- for the a-musement or b-musement, or even edification, of many among the silent majority.

~~~~~

The 'default' is the past tense, i.e., if it works without 'had', if it says what you mean to say without it, leave it, let it go.

But, note that ...

The bird had flown away.

The bird (had) flown away.

The bird flown away.

That doesn't work. It's gotta be 'had flown'.

No, it's gotta be 'flew', which is the past tense of 'to fly'.

The bird flew away ...

... which complies with the default rule.

.brad.thur.15oct09.