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iloveyou
Joined: 05 Aug 2006
Posts: 72
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 Posted: Sun Sep 20, 2009 11:59 pm Post subject: Ago,,, Past Perfect |
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Hello,
The dictionary says I can't use present perfect with ago.
Can I use past perfect with ago? or should i use before instead of ago.
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Use the past tense, not the present perfect, with ago
I started (NOT I've started) a new job a few weeks ago.
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Robert was going steady with Susan and was thinking of marrying her.
He wanted to know what kinds of girls her sister were, what her father was like, and how long ago(before?) her mother had died.
Thanks.
Yun |
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dragn
Joined: 17 Feb 2009
Posts: 450
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| Posted: Mon Sep 21, 2009 5:48 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
The dictionary says I can't use present perfect with ago.
Can I use past perfect with ago? or should i use before instead of ago.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Use the past tense, not the present perfect, with ago
I started (NOT I've started) a new job a few weeks ago.
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First, a warning: this is tricky. 
Your dictionary is right as far as normal conversation goes. This is a good, solid rule in regard to spoken discourse. In a written narrative, though, things can get a little more complicated.
Books could be written about the complex interactions between tenses in written narrative and the ways in which they differ from spoken discourse (and they have). I'm not going to try and write another one here, but hopefully I can give you a peek at what is going on.
| Quote: |
Robert was going steady with Susan and was thinking of marrying her.
He wanted to know what kinds of girls her sisters were, what her father was like, and how long ago(before?) her mother had died. |
Basically, in the above written narrative, we can easily and naturally consider the past time being referred to as a kind of temporal baseline. In other words, as we read this little story, it is easy for us to suspend our "conversational" grasp of time and consider the moment of the action in the story as the "present." For this reason, using ago sounds quite natural in the above setting. Of course, you could skirt the issue and use before or even rephrase it using since, but ago works here because we allow ourselves to regard the past time of the story as our "temporary present." There are books filled with technical terms to describe all of this, but I don't want to go there. They give me a headache. 
Hope this helps.
Greg |
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