I've stayed out of this so far as I haven't had anything new to add. It made an interesting read, though I get the impression that Buckmaster contradicts himself a bit when he proposes that the primary distiction is Past vs Non-Past while drawing attention to "Past" for "Non-Past" uses; I think this analysis fails to grasp the relationship between "Past" used for past time and "Past" used for other types of distance (e.g. formality). If the same form is used, it surely isn't coincidence.
Concerning the original statement that "Grammar is merely a product of a viewpoint", I don't think that's a revelation. Any choice of language is dependent on the speaker's perception, and that include choice of structure as well as lexis.
Grammar is based on viewpoints (?)
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LarryLatham
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I couldn't agree with you more, lolwhites. In my reading of Buckmaster, I believed that he does get it quite well, but he sometimes doesn't explain it carefully enough or fully enough. That's why I think people who aren't quite familiar with Lewis (who does explain it fully) might have a difficult read in Buckmaster.lolwhites wrote:I've stayed out of this so far as I haven't had anything new to add. It made an interesting read, though I get the impression that Buckmaster contradicts himself a bit when he proposes that the primary distiction is Past vs Non-Past while drawing attention to "Past" for "Non-Past" uses; I think this analysis fails to grasp the relationship between "Past" used for past time and "Past" used for other types of distance (e.g. formality). If the same form is used, it surely isn't coincidence.
Concerning the original statement that "Grammar is merely a product of a viewpoint", I don't think that's a revelation. Any choice of language is dependent on the speaker's perception, and that include choice of structure as well as lexis.
Larry Latham
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woodcutter
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core meanings
Forgive me if I don't understand that well, but as I see it Buckmaster is essentially grappling with the problem that we have when a student asks, let's say about the sentence
"If I saw a snake, I would be frightened"
Teacher, why do we use a past word? This isn't talking about the past.
Buckmaster mentions the concept of "core meanings" - and I would answer the student by saying that since you are putting yourself in an imagined future, then you use a past form for the previous sighting of the snake, the core meaning of the word "saw" remains the same. Simple.
Plenty of tough questions can get answered that way - I would be grateful if someone could explain to me why this is "sheer idiocy".
"If I saw a snake, I would be frightened"
Teacher, why do we use a past word? This isn't talking about the past.
Buckmaster mentions the concept of "core meanings" - and I would answer the student by saying that since you are putting yourself in an imagined future, then you use a past form for the previous sighting of the snake, the core meaning of the word "saw" remains the same. Simple.
Plenty of tough questions can get answered that way - I would be grateful if someone could explain to me why this is "sheer idiocy".
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LarryLatham
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Simple for who, Woodcutter? I'm sure it's easy for you to imagine, but perhaps not for students, for whom English seems to be a nightmare of contradiction. But even if your example is simple, it remains misleading. It ignores other examples of the use of past verb forms where past time cannot be manipulated to fit.
Did you want to speak to me now?
What was your name, please?
No matter how you look at these sentences, it is clear to native speakers that the temporal focus is NOW. So why are past tense forms being used, teacher?
The only way forward that I can see is to give up the tenacious hold on the view that past tense verb forms structurally represent past time. There must be something else operating here, and Buckmaster's (really Lewis's) "distance" argument accounts for all examples of the use of past tense forms. So it's even more simple than your explanation, because it does not leave confusing "exceptions."
Larry Latham
Did you want to speak to me now?
What was your name, please?
No matter how you look at these sentences, it is clear to native speakers that the temporal focus is NOW. So why are past tense forms being used, teacher?
The only way forward that I can see is to give up the tenacious hold on the view that past tense verb forms structurally represent past time. There must be something else operating here, and Buckmaster's (really Lewis's) "distance" argument accounts for all examples of the use of past tense forms. So it's even more simple than your explanation, because it does not leave confusing "exceptions."
Larry Latham
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woodcutter
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core meanings again
Well, I am not saying that my advice will help generate sentences, I think you need Swan's big book for that. I just mean that the logic needn't scare students.
What was your name again? is a way of asking about what happened just before - hence was.
Did you want to speak to me now? is a question asking about a desire that the other party had prior to the asking of this question. He may have the same desire now, that may be the salient point, but the core meaning nonetheless remains the same.
I find when you study Chinese, where the same characters have umpteen "different" meanings, the idea of a "core meaning" becomes inescapable.
What was your name again? is a way of asking about what happened just before - hence was.
Did you want to speak to me now? is a question asking about a desire that the other party had prior to the asking of this question. He may have the same desire now, that may be the salient point, but the core meaning nonetheless remains the same.
I find when you study Chinese, where the same characters have umpteen "different" meanings, the idea of a "core meaning" becomes inescapable.
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LarryLatham
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Sorry, Woodcutter. I've seen most of your other posts here, and believe you are sincere and generally knowledgeable about English. But you couldn't be more wrong here, I'm afraid. Did you want to speak to me now? has nothing whatever to do with what might have happened before now. Use of the past form "did" reflects the speaker's unsureness of the situation, his "distance" from certainty, and nothing more than that. After all, he could just as easily say, "Do you want to speak to me now?", but that's not what he says. I do agree with you that the logic involved in past simple verb structures should not scare or be difficult for students. That is exactly why we teachers should abandon an outmoded, discredited, exception-filled, and illogical explanation even if it has been taken as gospel for many decades. We've learned better now that we have computers to analyze masses of language data for us, and yet the inertia of the old and inadequate explanation keeps it in classrooms worldwide, and keeps students confused. The earlier view came from a time when the grammar was developed mainly from constructed examples, not real language data such as is available to us now.woodcutter wrote:What was your name again? is a way of asking about what happened just before - hence was.
Did you want to speak to me now? is a question asking about a desire that the other party had prior to the asking of this question. He may have the same desire now, that may be the salient point, but the core meaning nonetheless remains the same.
"What was your name, please?" is likewise not about something that might have happened before, even if you recast it as you have, as, "What was your name again?" Even if you design it as, "What did you say your name was?" it does not refer to an earlier event. We know that for sure because you could also say, "What did you say your name is?" for the same pragmatic value, not to mention, "What is your name?". (By the way, readers, if you don't think these are natural sentences, then I refer you to James Michener's Alaska, p. 409, top of the page. You might argue that James Michener's English grammar is wrong, but I'm not prepared to do that.) All of these sentences will elicit the hearer's name, in most cases. All of these sentences request the name of the hearer, and presumably his name now is the same as it was at some earlier time, so suggesting the past tense verb form is "...a way of asking about what happened before" doesn't fly. The only reasonable occasion for asking a person's name at an earlier time would be to ask a married woman her maiden name, a very special situation.
The easy, logical way out of this is simply to accept that past simple verb forms do not automatically signal reference to past time events.
Larry Latham
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woodcutter
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A language cannot absolutely escape the core meaning of a word, you could never say "I met her tomorrow", unless you were a time traveller. These core meanings always retain an influence on the situation. The same applies to vocabulary - "I'm feeling blue" will carry some nuance of blue-ness, though the semantic thrust is "I am sad".
What was your name again?. My name is the same now as it was. If the literal answer was different, we wouldn't choose that expression, as we sometimes do, to express a question in a more polite manner.
Perhaps when the first Irishperson asked "will you be wanting a cup of tea", they were playing with the language, and people worked out what was meant by referring to the core meanings. How else would such expressions emerge?
Whether my philosophy here is sound or not, my explanation is far more simple and easy to grasp than the alternative offered by the article, so I don't think the traditional "It's a noun behaving as a verb" school of things have really been bettered on that score.
What was your name again?. My name is the same now as it was. If the literal answer was different, we wouldn't choose that expression, as we sometimes do, to express a question in a more polite manner.
Perhaps when the first Irishperson asked "will you be wanting a cup of tea", they were playing with the language, and people worked out what was meant by referring to the core meanings. How else would such expressions emerge?
Whether my philosophy here is sound or not, my explanation is far more simple and easy to grasp than the alternative offered by the article, so I don't think the traditional "It's a noun behaving as a verb" school of things have really been bettered on that score.
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LarryLatham
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Oh, yes. I quite agree with you regarding the concept of core meaning. Just look at any word in the dictionary which has several "meaning senses" recorded there. If you look at the several definitions carefully, it is usually easy to see that they are all related in some central way.
My proposition is (or perhaps I should say, Lewis', and thereby Buckmaster's, and I guess yours as well) that the same principle of core meaning operates in grammatical structure as well. There is a central meaning to the structure of Past Simple verb forms, and it applies to all uses of the form, whether there is a reference to past time or not.
Actually, it appears you and I are not so far apart on this issue.
Larry Latham
My proposition is (or perhaps I should say, Lewis', and thereby Buckmaster's, and I guess yours as well) that the same principle of core meaning operates in grammatical structure as well. There is a central meaning to the structure of Past Simple verb forms, and it applies to all uses of the form, whether there is a reference to past time or not.
Actually, it appears you and I are not so far apart on this issue.
Larry Latham
While I take the view that the core meaning of "Past Simple" isn't Past Time, I'm less keen to promote the idea with my students except the Advanced ones. While Buckmaster proposes explaining core meanings to students from the start, in L1 if necessary, I think that such an approach will confuse and possibly demotivate all but those with an interest in Semantics.
So, to take the "Past Simple" as an example, I'd teach it to the students first in the context of talking about the past, but move onto other uses later. At the same time, I'd explain thatthey were learning an approximation, something that will do for the moment, and will get them through their KET, PET and FCE exams, but which they will have to modify later on.
At Advanced level I start to bring it all together and talk about "core meanings" - since I've never taught the same students from Beginner to Advanced level, that's the approach I have to take anyway. Some students may well have been "indoctrinated" by then, as Buckmaster says, but others are more open minded.
Incidentally, Woodcutter, I gave an exapmle of "Past Simple" for formality which I don't think can be analysed in terms of time:
Client: I'd like to book a flight to Hong Kong.
Travel Agent: When did you want to go?
That's why I sat that the core meaning is distance, not past time
So, to take the "Past Simple" as an example, I'd teach it to the students first in the context of talking about the past, but move onto other uses later. At the same time, I'd explain thatthey were learning an approximation, something that will do for the moment, and will get them through their KET, PET and FCE exams, but which they will have to modify later on.
At Advanced level I start to bring it all together and talk about "core meanings" - since I've never taught the same students from Beginner to Advanced level, that's the approach I have to take anyway. Some students may well have been "indoctrinated" by then, as Buckmaster says, but others are more open minded.
Incidentally, Woodcutter, I gave an exapmle of "Past Simple" for formality which I don't think can be analysed in terms of time:
Client: I'd like to book a flight to Hong Kong.
Travel Agent: When did you want to go?
That's why I sat that the core meaning is distance, not past time
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LarryLatham
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Why would this be simpler or less confusing for students, lolwhites? I think it would be just the opposite. Why not give them the real scoop right from the get go?lolwhites wrote:While I take the view that the core meaning of "Past Simple" isn't Past Time, I'm less keen to promote the idea with my students except the Advanced ones. While Buckmaster proposes explaining core meanings to students from the start, in L1 if necessary, I think that such an approach will confuse and possibly demotivate all but those with an interest in Semantics.
So, to take the "Past Simple" as an example, I'd teach it to the students first in the context of talking about the past, but move onto other uses later. At the same time, I'd explain thatthey were learning an approximation, something that will do for the moment, and will get them through their KET, PET and FCE exams, but which they will have to modify later on.
At Advanced level I start to bring it all together and talk about "core meanings" - since I've never taught the same students from Beginner to Advanced level, that's the approach I have to take anyway. Some students may well have been "indoctrinated" by then, as Buckmaster says, but others are more open minded.
Larry Latham
This thread (and all the other threads!) gives me a lot of food for thought. I can even envision myself mentioning the distance idea to high level students. But no, I am with lolwhites here. I'm not going to introduce the idea to my beginners. Of course, my beginners are more beginning than most others, I think, and my advanced might even fit your intermediateLarryLatham wrote:Why not give them the real scoop right from the get go?
Larry Latham
. I'm not sure I understand the concept of distance well enough to be able to do a good job of explaining it. In addition to that, I am not the only teacher these students have. I think it would be extremely confusing, especially in the beginning, to have such divergent explanations. My students are going to run across sentences like, "He went to the park last week." for which "past tense is something that happened in the past" fits. I do, however, explain to them that grammar explanations are just to help them make sense of things, and that grammar rules are made by teachers to try and help students understand things. We often oversimplify, and then the students make errors based on taking our oversimplifications as gospel.
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LarryLatham
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OK, Lorikeet. I suppose there must be lots of our colleagues around who feel as you do here. But let me press the issue once again: Why not give them the real scoop from the get go? Perhaps it is more appropriate for me to describe it differently. Why not use an explanation that fits all examples of the use of Past Simple Tense? It's an improvement on the old explanation. It's no more difficult a concept than "Past tense used for past time", and it has the handy advantage of not being a concept full of 'exceptions' or that has to be unlearned later.
Larry Latham
Larry Latham
Re: core meanings
woodcutter wrote:Forgive me if I don't understand that well, but as I see it Buckmaster is essentially grappling with the problem that we have when a student asks, let's say about the sentence
"If I saw a snake, I would be frightened"
Teacher, why do we use a past word? This isn't talking about the past.
Buckmaster mentions the concept of "core meanings" - and I would answer the student by saying that since you are putting yourself in an imagined future, then you use a past form for the previous sighting of the snake, the core meaning of the word "saw" remains the same. Simple.
Plenty of tough questions can get answered that way - I would be grateful if someone could explain to me why this is "sheer idiocy".
I would think that explanation wouldn't be understood even by many native speakers, let lone ESL students.
Re: core meanings again
Did his name change between the past and the now?What was your name again? is a way of asking about what happened just before - hence was.
And why do some people use:
Sorry, what is your name again?