Over and over again. So very, very tiresome. How much longer is Brad Johnson going to subject the rest of us to this idiocy?
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From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Brad Johnston [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, January 30, 2009 9:48 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Grammar As Style (2)
Grammar As Style, by Virginia Tufte, c.1971 - continued
Under the same rubric, I earlier sent some examples of the word 'had' being put in front of past tense verbs. Below are some further examples, from the same source, of equally egregious errors of a different kind. Again I capitalized the verbs for those without 'html'. (I'm really not shouting :)
Even if you are not interested in the verb errors, take a peek at number 13, which is particularly interesting.
Note that these are all from a grammar textbook. It's OK for the quoted authors to have written what they wrote but they should have been taught, and a grammar text should teach, differently.
.brad.30jan09.
1 - I looked ahead, up the long street to Villenouvelle station, where I (had taken) TOOK the train so many times in the small hours of the morning. (Merton)
2 - The dream-song at the end of little Jean's famous poem, "The Playlanders", which she (had written) WROTE, all magnificently, at Inglesse, when she was five. (Conrad Aiken)
3 - Lowell, resting in the wing on the floor of the stage, Lowell recuperating from the crack he (had given) GAVE his head, was a dreamy figure of peace in the corner of the proscenium. (Norman Mailer)
4 - Sir Walter Scott thought to flatter an old Scotswoman from whose singing he (had taken) TOOK down a number of ballads by showing her the printed texts of the pieces she (had sung) SANG to him. (Albert B. Friedman)
5 - The noise (had been) WAS so loud, so sharp. (William Golding)
6 - On the edge of the silted and sanded up Old Harbor, right where the Hawley dock had been, the stone foundation is still there. (John Steinbeck) Bravo, John!
7 - During his four years in the Army Air Force the American people (had been) WERE represented by the other enlisted men around him. (Knowles)
8 - That means, I take it, that Keats (had been) WAS trying to write -- in vain. (John Middleton Murry)
9 - Then one day she went back to Australia. They exchanged three letters. Six months later, Danby (had taken) TOOK up with Adelaide. She was sweet, she was there. (Iris Murdoch)
10 - But nothing ever happened. The waiters (had been) were polite, the drinkers (had been) WERE polite, the streets were quiet. (Norman Mailer)
11 - I realized then that I (never had forgotten) NEVER FORGOT it, and a good thing too. (James Gould Cozzens)
12 - But long before that time the lizards (had come) CAME back upon the rocks. (David Garnett)
13 - I once traced a rule, illustrated by the same sentence, through thirty grammars published over a period of a hundred and fifty years. No writer admitted that he (had taken) TOOK it from an earlier book, and no writer ever changed the illustration, because the point at issue was so artificial that it was almost impossible to find another sentence that contained it. (L.M.Myers, The Roots of Modern English)
Brad's note: I can point you, if you're interested, to three current definitions of the past perfect which are exactly alike and equally wrong. The blind led the blind. Who knows who started it.
Before I return "Grammar As Style" to its rightful owner, let me quote another item from it.
Colleges insist on graduating students who can't write an intelligible English sentence, who don't speak three words of a foreign language, who have read neither Marx not Keynes not Freud nor Joyce, and who never will. (Cecelia Holland, "I Don't Trust Anyone Under 30", The Saturday Evening Post, August 10, 1968, p.12)
One might wonder if the condition has gotten better or worse with the passage of 40+ years.
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While we're at it, here are the three definitions -- splendidly alike, splendidly wrong.
LookWAYup Translating Dictionary
The Past perfect is a perfective tense used to express action completed in the past.
The Free Dictionary
The Past perfect is a perfective tense used to express action completed in the past.
WordNet
The Past Perfect is a perfective tense used to express action completed in the past.
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