Student A: (scribble, scribble) The Past Perfect: It’s meanings vary with
context.
Student B: (scribble, scribble) The Past Perfect: It’s meanings vary with
context.
Student C: (scribble, scribble) The Past Perfect: It’s meanings vary with
context.
Student D: (scribble, scribble) The Past Perfect: It’s meanings vary with
context.
Student E: What the hell does this mean?
Student F: Damned if I know. Better take it down though.
Student G: I thought he was going to tell us what it is.
Student H: He doesn't know. He's just blowing smoke.
(Bell rings.)
Student I: Let's get out of here. This sucks. I knew I should have taken
Russian.
~~~~~
Herb,
Maybe we should have that ... what did you call it? ... ah, yes, here's what I
wrote to you on 09 January:
On Tuesday, 04 January, 5 days ago, you wrote (to ATEG): "This is a good
suggestion, that we have a substantive, productive discussion of the past
perfect".
What happened to your substantive, productive discussion of the past perfect,
without Brad, who is more than willing to watch from the sidelines? In fact, he
VERY MUCH wants to watch your productive discussion.
What happened is that the ones who participate under the rubric of past perfect,
have gone off in all directions, like a fireworks display on the fourth of July.
There is no one out there who has anything but a vague, shaky idea of what it
is. They know it's there but they don't know what it is and when they try to
look it up, they get that same rocket pattern from a plethora of authors who all
take a different stab at it without ever coming to a reasonable conclusion that
can take on all comers.
You complain that I have not surveyed the literature. If 120+ sources is not
enough for you, how many do you want? I read all of the names you sent me --
Quirk, Jespersen, Huddleston, Pinker, Greenbaum, Wardhaugh, Pullum, and many
others and they all display the same pattern. They don't know what it is. I
assume you don't either or you would have sent it to me by now.
If you know what it is, send it to me -- please. Show me what you would write on
the board if a student asked you what it is. Your answer needs to be crisp
enough that they can copy it in their notebooks and carry it out the door when
the bell rings.
.br-had.09jan11.
Since no one, including you, knows what it is, perhaps your call for a
"substantive, productive discussion of the past perfect", would be a good idea.
Let me be preemptive and answer the obvious question. It took a long time, with
a lot of help from ATEG and a host of other interested parties, but I did
wrestle the beast to the ground. I do know what it is. It's useful, it's
valuable because it's useful, and it is very much worth knowing. Being a former
'had' abuser, I know of what I speak.
.brad.sat.12feb11.
________________________________
From: "STAHLKE, HERBERT F" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Fri, February 11, 2011 10:59:40 AM
Subject: Re: On meanings of the past perfect
The past perfect is a compound verb form made up of the past tense of the
perfect aspect auxiliary “have” together with the past participle of the verb.
It’s meanings vary with context, as is typical of auxiliary verb constructions.
Herb
From:Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Brad Johnston
Sent: Friday, February 11, 2011 10:16 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: On meanings of the past perfect
Herb,
Thank you. I'm glad you think something I pulled from the BYU Corpus is worth
considering. I thank you, again, for bringing that corpus to my attention.
The response I most want from you is a reply to any one of the several recent
emails in which I asked you to please tell me what the past perfect is. "Show me
what you would write on the board if a student asked you what it is. Your
answer needs to be crisp enough that they can copy it in their notebooks and
carry it out the door when the bell rings."
You waxed melodic in a variety of different ways and down a variety of different
paths but I still need to know, to make what you say below make sense, what is
the past perfect? How can any of us consider your thoughts on the Salinger quote
without knowing your answer to that simple question?
What is it?
.brad.11feb11.
________________________________
From:"STAHLKE, HERBERT F" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Fri, February 11, 2011 1:24:22 AM
Subject: On meanings of the past perfect
I usually don’t respond to Brad’s past perfect posts, but once in a while he
asks a question worth considering. In his latest post he provides a list of
past perfects from the BYU Corpus that he contends are incorrect and asks if
there is another rule involved. There is. Let’s take just one of his examples.
The Treasury Department figures showed it soared to $82.7 billion. Economists
<had predicted> predicted a number closer to $30 billion.
The status of the information in the second sentence changes when the verb is
changed from past perfect to simple past. The foregrounded information is in
the first sentence, and the second sentence is background. If the simple past
is used in the second sentence it is no longer clear what the status of the
information is.
In addition to the time referring function that Brad recognizes, the past
perfect also has a discourse function that it shares with other aspectual verb
structures, including the present perfect and the progressive. To take a simple
case, and one that other members have commented on recently, the compound tenses
contrast in narrative discourse with the simple tenses. Narrative writers use
simple past and simple present to move the action forward, and they use perfect
and progressive aspects to provide background information. Here’s an example
from Salinger’s Nine Stories.
I remember a significant incident that occurred just a day or two after Bobby
and I arrived in New York. I was standing up in a very crowded Lexington Avenue
bus, holding on to the enamel pole near the driver’s seat, buttocks to buttocks
with the chap behind me. For a number of blocks the driverhad repeatedly given
those of us bunched up near the front door a curt order to “step to the rear of
the vehicle.” Some of us had tried to oblige him. Some of us hadn’t. At
length, with a red light in his favor, the harassed man swung around in his seat
and looked up at me, just behind him. At nineteen, I was a hatless type, with a
flat, black, not particularly clean, Continental-type pompadour over a badly
broken-out inch of forehead. He addressed me in a lowered, an almost prudent
tone of voice. “All right, buddy,” he said, “let’s move it.” It was the
“buddy,” I think, that did it. Without even bothering to bend over a
little--that is, to keep the conversation at least as private as he’d kept it—I
informed him, in French, that he was a rude, stupid, overbearing imbecile, and
that he’d never know how much I detested him. Then, rather elated, I stepped to
the rear of the vehicle.
Salinger, J. D. 1953. Nine Stories. New York: Bantam Books. P. 130.
In this passage I’ve put the verbs with aspectual auxiliaries in bold, and the
clauses that carry the narrative forward in italics. I’ve included in boldface
two participial phrases; like aspectual auxiliaries they are used to provide
background information. There are four instances of past perfect, and the first
four could be replaced with simple pasts. However, the narrative would then
change. Giving the curt order, obliging, and not obliging would then all become
foregrounded and would be part of the narrative line. Clearly, that would
weaken the narrative, and Salinger is a better writer than that, so he chose to
background those pieces of information. The past perfect in this passage
functions to provide background information rather than to specify a particular
time reference, although it does that as well.
It’s impossible to discuss background, foregrounding, and narrative line and the
grammatical structures they use when dealing with a single sentence. These a
discourse functions and require coherent passages to show how they are
expressed.
It is, by the way, an interesting and instructive exercise to have students find
passages and apply this sort of analysis to them to distinguish backgrounding
and foregrounding.
Herb
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