Here's the context, verbatim, for the Sparks quote. Should the third sentence in the second paragraph read "She had taken" or "She took"? If the latter, why did he write, "She'd taken"?
The Last Song, by Nicholas Sparks, c.2009.
page 1 - Prologue - Ronnie
Staring out of the bedroom window, Ronnie wondered whether Pastor Harris was already at the church. She assumed that he was, and as she watched the waves breaking over the beach, she questioned whether he was still able to notice the play of light as it streamed through the stained-glass window above him. Perhaps not -- the window had been installed more than a month ago, after all, and he was probably too preoccupied to notice anymore. Still, she hoped that someone new in town had stumbled into the church this morning and experienced the same sense of wonder she'd had when she'd first seen the light flood the church on that cold day in November. And she hoped the visitor had taken some time to consider where the window had come from and to admire its beauty.
She'd been awake for an hour, but she wasn't ready to face the day. The holidays felt different this year. Yesterday, she'd taken her younger brother, Jonah, for a walk down the beach. Here and there were Christmas trees on the decks of the houses they passed. At this time of year, they had the beach pretty much to themselves, but Jonah showed no interest in either the waves or the seagulls that had fascinated him only a few months earlier. Instead, he'd wanted to go to the workshop, and she'd taken him
page 2 -
there, although he'd stayed only a few minutes before leaving without saying a single word.
On the bedstand beside her lay a stack of framed photographs from the alcove of the small beach house, along with other items she'd collected that morning. In the silence, she studied them until she was interrupted by a knock on the door. Her mom poked her head in.
"Do you want breakfast? I found some cereal in the cupboard."
"I'm not hungry, Mom."
"You need to eat, sweetie."
Ronnie continued to stare at the pile of photos, seeing nothing at all. "I was wrong, Mom. And I don't know what to do now."
~~~~~~~~~~~~
--- On
Tue, 5/4/10, Webmail bdespain <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
From: Webmail bdespain <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: forcing the irregular past participle
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Tuesday, May 4, 2010, 3:04 PM
There is a simple explanation that some regular ATEGers may not want to hear, so it is with some trepidation that I even reply.
I would think that Mr. Sparks wanted to set the scene for an ensuing narrative which he planned to write in the past tense. Since only a single sentence was quoted, this idea cannot be confirmed. It does, however, point out that the sentence is not normally self-contained. Over the years many English speakers have learned to follow the custom borrowed from Latin and other latinate languages to set such sentences in what they commonly know as a past perfect tense. This tense consists of a combination of the past tense form of "have" along with a past participle. The past participle has served English speakers well as an adjective form of the verb to denote (1) for transitive verbs, a passive. and (2) for any full verbs, a perfect aspect (auxiliaries do not participate in tense). There seems to have been little resistance to the use of have to denote a perfect aspect in the present tense. However, for
some reason the use of a past perfect seems like over-kill to some. It appears that almost any past perfect can be read as a simple past if the interpreter is willing to understand the sequence of sentences in the narrative and adverbial modifications as adequate to the task of describing the sequence of events.
It is in maintaining a sequence of tenses and in making the indirect paraphrase of a quotation that the past perfect seems to be the most indespensible. The modal auxiliaries also participate in both these situations where "will" becomes "would" etc without any change in its modal force. The auxiliary "have" also becomes "had" without its changing of perfect aspect.
I think that when the adjective form is found in attributive position before a noun that is modified by it, the old form tends to be retained as in "a swollen gland", but not *"a swelled gland." Yet there is "his gland has swelled" alongside "his gland has swollen." The contrast between the two perfect participle forms in verbs that have them, such as "struck vs. stricken" "sowed vs. sown" "slid vs. slidden" "thrived vs. thriven" "shrunk vs. shrunken" "shaved vs. shaven," etc. has the potential of causing confusion about the formation of a perfect. One tends to be used in adjective environments and either one where a perfect aspect is desired. The passive voice can have two interpretations because of the adjective form. For example, when I choose between "She was clothed in gold" and "She was clad in gold" the former may be interpreted ambiguously as either a predicate adjective or as
a passive voice with her as patient. In the latter expression only the predicate adjective interpretation seems ready to hand. I think maybe the same sort of double entendre is present in forms of the perfect aspect. It has been mentioned previously that "forgot vs. forgotten" are both selectable for the perfect aspect. For the attributive adjective only "forgotten" is available.
Bruce