Herb,
I agree with you that younger students can productively be introduced to
the concept of aspect through the medium of the progressive, but I'm
less convinced that it's a helpful discussion to have (among younger
students at least) for the perfect.
The perfect is a fuzzy amalgam that straddles the border between tense
and aspect. Teasing out the distinctions would also require introducing
students to the notion of other verb forms being perfective or
imperfective (and, indeed, the perfect itself as being imperfective
sometimes).
And then there's the terminological split among the major grammars:
those that follow Quirk et alia call the perfect an aspect, but the CGEL
treats it a secondary tense and reserves the label of aspect for the
progressive alone.
A thorough discussion of the reasons for choosing one scheme or another
would be fascinating, but probably beyond even what most college classes
could handle.
Karl
On 1/9/2011 8:11 AM, STAHLKE, HERBERT F wrote:
> Bruce,
>
> Well put. I didn't mention the transitivity-based distinctions you make, but I do find them useful. Even on a pedagogical level, understanding transitivity is essential to understanding something like passive so that passive voice doesn't turn into the shibboleth it often has for writing teachers. The problem is that teachers in the lower grades need more than a nudge; they need explicit training in grammar. The distinction between tense and aspect is a topic that seems like relativity to a lot of people rather than simply the study of the ways in which we look at an event or action in time. It's a subject that can be handled much earlier than it generally is.
>
> Herb
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bruce Despain
> Sent: Sunday, January 09, 2011 9:31 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Structure of perfect aspect
>
> Herb, Craig, and others have addressed pedagogical concerns while I have concentrated on the analysis. On my part, at least, there is possibly an inordinate tendency to address the details of an analysis, definitions, interpretations, etc., without proper concideration to how the teacher can bring these before the students. Yet, sometimes the better we understand the concepts and phenomena of the grammar, the better we may be in position to explain them to the student. There is a critical point of overload, however, where, for example, we might be tempted to get into relativity when a time-line will do.
>
> I did not mention that the term "present participle" for intransitives contrasts with "active participle" for transitives. This then introduces the topic of progressive aspect (another thread?). I think the earlier we can itroduce aspect, the better. Maybe its more like the revolution in teaching Math that has preceeded that of grammar. Maybe the teachers in the lower grades need some nudging in this direction.
>
> Bruce
>
> --- [log in to unmask] wrote:
>
> From: Craig Hancock<[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Structure of perfect aspect
> Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2011 07:30:41 -0500
>
> Herb,
> Thanks for your usual thoughtful response.
> I will be giving a conference presentation in April on epistemic modality, trying to explore ways in which attention to these modals (including "will") can help us mentor students who are learning to think carefully about levels of certainty in academic discourse. Many students have a hard time learning how to hedge what they are saying and learning how to enter into a conversation. "Let the reader know how you know what you know, the basis and the limits of your authority" is a statement I make early and often with my writing classes. The modals are not the only way this grounding and hedging is accomplished, but they are at the center of the system.
> If we think in terms of discourse, we can make wiser decisions about what is useful to know. In past tense narratives, a writer needs to keep clear the difference between the sequence of events in the real or imagined world of the text and the sequence of the telling. The point at which the narrative starts can be a point of reference. Earlier events need to be narrated clearly as having already happened. Perfect aspect factors in fairly heavily.
> My own frame of reference, as you know, is from the discourse side. If we understand how good writers use the language to accomplish goals like grounding and hedging and keeping time reference clear, we are in much better shape to make wise choices about what it is useful to know at various levels of education.
>
> Craig>
>
> This thread has covered a lot of ground in the last 24 or so hours, and
>> I'll try to address some of the topics.
>>
>> There is clear linguistic benefit in Bruce's enumeration of the
>> possible realizations of a category like the English auxiliary. We
>> can't come up with a phrase structure rule like Chomsky's AUX --->
>> Tense + (Modal) + (have + en) + (be + ing) without such a careful
>> tabulation, so it's a necessary analytic step. (I understand that the
>> auxiliary is now understood to have a hierarchical structure,
>> motivated at least by problems of scope, but it's word order I'm
>> interested in here.) However, what the rule makes explicit that the
>> listing implies is that we have an ordered string of optional
>> auxiliary elements. It also gives us a clear structure for describing
>> question formation, negative placement, and the use of "do." However,
>> defining the options that the auxiliary makes available does not help
>> us to understand the difference, for example, between tense marking on
>> root vs. epistemic modals and the bearing that has on truth value, nor
>> does it help us with how these various options play out in discourse, a point that Craig makes.
>>
>> On the nature of tense, there is clearly variation in the use of the term.
>> I haven't taught English in K-12 since 1965, so I wouldn't presume to
>> suggest how that "tense" should be handled at various grade levels.
>> Referring to all of the finite forms Bruce lists, except for the
>> passive, as tenses, probably makes little difference for most
>> purposes, although I'd probably not want to treat modals under tense.
>> A table of tenses and other auxiliary structures would be a bit
>> intimidating at this level, though, and I'm not sure I'd even use it
>> as an organizing scheme in a reference grammar. In Indo-European
>> languages tense is commonly considered a morphological category.
>> Other IE languages have morphological futures, perfects, aorists,
>> etc., and grammars of Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Lithuanian, etc. typically describe those as tenses.
>> Mood is typically kept separate, so that there will be separate sets
>> of verb paradigms for indicative, subjunctive, imperative, optative,
>> etc., even though these are also marked morphologically in a lot of IE
>> languages. The fact that English and other Germanic languages have
>> only two tenses, past and non-past, is one of the distinguishing
>> traits of the Germanic languages, and that's part of the rationale for
>> defining tense morphologically in English. It's linguistically sound,
>> but pedagogy may make other demands. Most modern reference grammars
>> of English use tense in this way. Jespersen, notably, does not. He
>> refers to perfect and pluperfect as tenses.
>>
>> On the question of whether there is a future tense, I think once again
>> we have to consider audience. It makes sense with a K12 or college
>> writing audience to talk about multiple tenses, including future, on
>> the basis of sense rather than strictly of morphology if only because
>> we rarely would get into the depth of analysis that, say, an undergrad
>> structure of English class might demand. In a structure of English
>> class I would address tense as morphological and spend a fair amount
>> of time on aspect as well. If we're doing serious grammatical
>> analysis, it is necessary to distinguish tense, aspect, and modality
>> from each other, and in a reference grammar it makes better sense to
>> say that "will" can be used to express futurity while specifying that it is a modal, not a tense.
>>
>> Herb
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
>> Sent: Saturday, January 08, 2011 9:00 PM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: Structure of perfect aspect
>>
>> Bruce,
>> When more than one element is making the time sequence clear, it
>> may be difficult to signal one as the "redundant" one. The redundancy
>> would have to include all the elements, I think, though the second or
>> third might be thought of as the first option for editing.
>> "My children could watch TV when they did their homework." This
>> sounds like bad practice. The default reading would be that they could
>> do both at the same time.
>> "My children could watch TV when they had done their homework."
>> Much better parenting going on. The past perfect makes the sequence clear.
>> "My children could do their homework, then watch TV." Sequence is
>> clear in this version without the perfect aspect.
>> "After they had finished their homework, my children could watch TV."
>> Here we have much redundancy, but I suspect most of us would find it
>> highly acceptable. All the different choices are working toward the
>> same goal, a very clear parenting decision to make TV watching
>> contingent on the homework being done.
>> I think any description of the past perfect needs to think of it as
>> working in harmony with other options for making time relations clear.
>>
>> Craig>
>>
>> After I had finished the book, I returned it to the library = I
>> finished
>>> the book sometime in the past; then I returned the book to the
>>> library after that time.
>>
>> After I finished the book, I returned it to the
>>> library = I finished the book sometime in the past; I returned the
>>> book to the library after that time.
>>
>> The time sequence of the clauses in the
>>> two sentences is interpreted identically. The perfect aspect in the
>>> first example is just as redundant as the "then" conjunction in the
>>> paraphrase.
>>> In most writing such simplicity is to be praised. The context may
>>> suggest that the sequence of tenses be made more explicit, hence, the
>>> redundancy may sometimes be favored by some.
>>> --- [log in to unmask] wrote:
>>>
>>> From: Brad Johnston
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>> Subject: Re: Structure of perfect aspect
>>> Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2011 08:06:11 -0800
>>>
>>>
>>
>> What does this sentence mean: After I had finished the book, I
>>> returned it to the library?
>>
>>
>> What does this sentence mean: After I
>>> finished the book, I returned it to the library?
>>
>> Trying to understand.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> From: Craig Hancock
>>
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