As I said in my response, it depends on what the author wants to say.  Checking one of the options means that your words "should read" be taken as asking me to make a judgement about what the author intended to say.  I will have to say that the author intended to say what he actually wrote.  I am sure that if you had written the article the wording would be different. 

--- [log in to unmask] wrote:

From: Brad Johnston <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Texas is getting explicit, continued
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2011 18:46:04 -0800

Bruce,

 

This sentence, Of course, she and her colleagues had taken grammar classes in college, should read ...

 

( x  ) Of course, she and her colleagues had taken grammar classes in college.

 

(     ) Of course, she and her colleagues took grammar classes in college.

 

Please check one or the other.

 

.thanks.brad.30jan11.

---

From: Bruce Despain <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Sat, January 29, 2011 11:08:05 PM
Subject: Re: Texas is getting explicit, continued

I see your point, Brad.  Elsie Nash was quoted in the past ("said").  The author then switches the tense in this paragraph to the present, "has" presumably referring to the time of the writing or reading of the article. You will also see that the perfect progressive participle was used, presumably to set the aspect based on the present time.  This means that she is presently teaching, but began teaching previously.  At this point the author seems to want to move to the past to refer to a time when Elsie Nash and her colleagues were in college.  This makes the past tense fully appropriate. 

 

The question remains whether the past of "have", i.e., "had" is a legitimate choice or the past of "take", i.e., "took" would be better.  In the former case the perfect participle would convey an aspect (perfect) in harmony with the aspect of the first senence.  In the latter case, the aspect of the first sentence would be ignored and the narrative made more lively by using the simple verb form.  This simple form would hamonize with the following sentence, which quotes another teacher in the past, but who uses a simple present. 

 

My point is that either choice might be appropriate depending on where the author wants the readers to shift their point of view.  However, I do not see a justification for a strong past narrative in this piece.  The "narrative" is actually a dialogue between the teachers and the reporter.  This activity was probably not meant to be brought forward to a more prominent narrative stage.  The use of "took" would interfer with the use of "said."  I believe the reporter was right in keeping the experiences of the teachers highlighted by means of marking some of them with aspectual relations. 

--- [log in to unmask] wrote:

From: Brad Johnston <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Texas is getting explicit, continued
Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2011 07:59:13 -0800

Thanks, Bruce. Here's a bit more context, from the Dallas Morning News of 14 January.

 

“We are of a generation where grammar was not a focus in our education,” said Elsie Nash, an English teacher at Richardson High School. Nash has been teaching for six years.

 

Of course, she and her colleagues had taken grammar classes in college.

 

“But we can use a refresher,” said Kate Gonzales, an English teacher at Berkner High School who also has six years of experience.

 

I don't understand the point you're making but shouldn't the middle paragraph of the three above read ".. her colleagues took grammar classes .."?

 

.brad.29jan11.

---

From: Bruce Despain <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Sat, January 29, 2011 8:52:08 AM
Subject: Re: Texas is getting explicit, continued

It makes perfect sense, if you assume that the past tense of the verb "take" was desired.  Without the larger context I cannot make this judgement about the writer's desires.  However, in the sentences you gave there was context to suggest that the writer might desire to make a past tense of the verb "have."  This would allow the use of a perfect participle construction as I gave it.  The verb "have" together with the perfect participle is the normal way to express the perfect aspect.  I believe your examples of the acceptable uses of this construction are confined to clauses within the context of a single sentence. 

--- [log in to unmask] wrote:

From: Brad Johnston <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Texas is getting explicit, continued
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2011 12:45:35 -0800

Bruce,

 

What he did was try to put 'had' in front of a past tense verb and thereby forced the irregular past participle because the verb is irregular.

 

If that doesn't make as much sense as you'd like, work with it a while and it will clarify itself.

 

.brad.27jan11.

 

Ref: "She and her colleagues had taken grammar classes in college."

 

 

---

From: Bruce Despain <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Wed, January 26, 2011 11:37:52 AM
Subject: Re: Texas is getting explicit, continued

This analysis seems to come from taking the phrase "had"+perfect participle as a "tense" like that in some other languages.  Hence, on a given day I might easily write that a teacher had awakened, eaten breakfast, brushed her teeth, gotten into her car, driven toward the school, stopped at a drugstore, purchased The Dallas Morning News, arrived at the school, parked her car, and gone to her classroom, before she finally started to teach the little dears.  All of it happened before she taught that day, did it not?  This is definitely a past tense of "have," but its use with the perfect participles is a sign that the perfect aspect is desired for the interpretation. 

--- [log in to unmask] wrote:

From: Brad Johnston <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Texas is getting explicit, continued
Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2011 08:15:41 -0800

Jeffrey,

 

On any given day, would you write that a teacher had awakened, had eaten breakfast, had brushed her teeth, had gotten into her car, had driven toward the school, had stopped at a drugstore, had purchased The Dallas Morning News, had arrived at the school, had parked her car, had gone to her classroom, before she finally started to teach the little dears? All of it happened before she taught that day, did it not?

 

The verb in your sentence, 'had taken', is NOT 'past perfect'. It's a rather long story but people DO put 'had'; in front of past tense verbs. Look at any newspaper or listen to any newscast. The BBC and the Associated Press are particularly flagrant committers.

 

If you try to put 'had' in front of an IRREGULAR past tense verb, you may try, for example, to put 'had' in front of 'took' and since 'had took' strikes most of us as wrong, you force the irregular past participle and thus write, 'had taken', as you did. What you did was try to put 'had' in front of a past tense verb and thereby forced the irregular past participle because the verb is irregular. If that doesn't make as much sense as you'd like, work with it a while and it will clarify itself.

 

The past perfect: By the time something happened, something else had already happened, e.g, By the time the police arrived, the robbers had fled, or, When I awoke, the sun had hit the snooze button and it was raining cats and dogs. The robbers were already gone and the sun was already gone; nothing there but cops and water.

 

As a practical matter, you should consider the past tense the 'default', to borrow from computers, and if it works, use it. If "she and her colleagues took grammar classes in college" makes sense, use it.

 

I hope this helps.

 

.brad.26jan11.

 

---

From: "Weiss, Jeffrey" <[log in to unmask]>
To: Brad Johnston <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sat, January 15, 2011 12:38:17 PM
Subject: RE: Texas is getting explicit

I agree that yours is correct, of course. But why is mine wrong? It's past perfect.  In the context of the passage, its an activity they <had completed> completed before starting to teach. The second activity from the past is understood rather than stated, to be sure, but does that make the sentence grammatically wrong?

Maybe so. I do not claim to be an expert technical grammarian...1:-{)>

(Thank you for being a reader, in any case!)

Jeffrey Weiss
The Dallas Morning News
[log in to unmask]
469-330-5632
________________________________________
From: Brad Johnston [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Saturday, January 15, 2011 9:01 AM
To: Weiss, Jeffrey
Subject: Texas is getting explicit

Richardson schools retool grammar instruction to meet new Texas education mandates

By JEFFREY WEISS / The Dallas Morning News, Saturday, January 15, 2011

[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>

"Of course, she and her colleagues had taken grammar classes in college."

Good article, Jeffrey, but note, speaking of good grammar, that she and her colleagues took grammar classes in college.

.brad.15jan11.

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