Bruce and Herb,

Based on reactions by students to the traditional terms, as well as on my desire to set up some scaffolding for later points in the course, I find myself wanting to just say that verbs have two tensed forms (past and present) and three tenseless ones (base form, -ing form, and non-ing form; with the usual provision that for regular verbs, the non-ing form looks like the past). The problem with this, of course, is that however well this would work internally, it wouldn't help students read reference grammars later. Still...even "-en participle" seems to cause trouble, since the great majority of those forms don't have an -en -- the label sets up a false expectation. Every book I've ever seen that uses the "-en" label immediately warns the reader about the lack of -en in most cases, but this never seems to stick. Emphasizing the tenseless bit sets up finite vs. nonfinite for later (at which point I'd still want to say tensed vs. tenseless, out of a drive for consistency).

---- Bill Spruiell

-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of STAHLKE, HERBERT F
Sent: Thu 1/6/2011 2:13 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Suggestion of Distinct Name for Past Perfect Tense
 
Bruce wrote:

I have recently begun to try to avoid calling the form "past participle," because it is not always past.  With transitive verbs it serves as the passive form.  A more accurate nomenclature would make it the "perfect participle."  The participles are "transient" adjectives to help distinguish them from the "inherent" adjectives.  In the cases where there are two forms of perfect participle, the distinction between inherent and transient is shifting by dialect.

Bruce,

Jespersen anticipates us on this terminological problem as well.  For the vary reasons you've cited as well as his desire to keep semantic and grammatical terms distinct, he refers to the -ing participle as the "first participle" and the -en participle as the "second participle."  He uses "second participle" also of two-term weak verbs.

Herb



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