Teacher Discussion Forums

I met him during the time when I was in high school.

Some tell me that "during" and "when" are prohibited in joint appearance in such sentences; others say that "when" can be omitted. I agree with the latter comment, but am not sure where the thinking behind the former comment is coming from. Can you help?[/b]

I'd be extremely interested to meet the being who has such authority over the universal chaos that he/she might engender concensus on the issue of what should or should not be linguistically "prohibited", and would be even more interested to learn how such prohibitions coud be enforced...

It is my personal opinion borne of lengthy observation that grammars involving prescription and prohibition such as those espoused by those obsessed with unsystematic parsing and confused by a misapprehension as to the sanctity of the English "word" are of limited use to learners.

Such ruminations aside, I personally feel that the phrase "...during the time when..." involves a tautology that would contribute nothing to the stylistic regard in which I would hold its writer.

Whats wrong with "I met him in high school" for goodness sake? I suppose, however, that if you're unconvinced by the power that the English finite has to position establish a relative chronology between the speaker and the spoken about (the fact that this is precisely the role that the tense finite plays notwithstanding), you could always take the lumbering "during the time when" from the field and give the far more sprightly "while" a run as substitute.

prawn wrote:I'd be extremely interested to meet the being who has such authority over the universal chaos that he/she might engender concensus on the issue of what should or should not be linguistically "prohibited", and would be even more interested to learn how such prohibitions coud be enforced...

It is my personal opinion borne of lengthy observation that grammars involving prescription and prohibition such as those espoused by those obsessed with unsystematic parsing and confused by a misapprehension as to the sanctity of the English "word" are of limited use to learners.

Such ruminations aside, I personally feel that the phrase "...during the time when..." involves a tautology that would contribute nothing to the stylistic regard in which I would hold its writer.

Whats wrong with "I met him in high school" for goodness sake? I suppose, however, that if you're unconvinced by the power that the English finite has to position establish a relative chronology between the speaker and the spoken about (the fact that this is precisely the role that the tense finite plays notwithstanding), you could always take the lumbering "during the time when" from the field and give the far more sprightly "while" a run as substitute.

LOL! At least you'll never have to fear being offered a job as director of a future Academy for the Protection of English.

My only doubt is as to the different meanings of the preposition "during":
"During" has two main meanings:through, at some time in.

He ate many sweets through/out the whole morning.

He ate many sweets <at some time> in the morning when he was at school.

during my time at high school would be OK.

The sentence might sound awkward to some ears, but I can't imagine why anyone would have any objections to it on structural grounds.

'during' here is a preposition with complement 'the time'.

'when' here introduces a defining relative clause modifying 'the time.' It can be omitted because it refers to the complement of the clause (not the subject).

They perform absolutely independent functions in this sentence.

Language may not have enforceable rules, but it certainly has a structure (created by the usage of particular linguistic communities). Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to describe language in the first place.

noel wrote:The sentence might sound awkward to some ears, but I can't imagine why anyone would have any objections to it on structural grounds.

'during' here is a preposition with complement 'the time'.

'when' here introduces a defining relative clause modifying 'the time.' It can be omitted because it refers to the complement of the clause (not the subject).

They perform absolutely independent functions in this sentence.

Language may not have enforceable rules, but it certainly has a structure (created by the usage of particular linguistic communities). Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to describe language in the first place.

Many thanks, noel. I see it much clearer now.

With all due respect, certainly language has structure, but it has no rules - unenforceable or otherwise.

Your analytical method is as follows: Take some written language. If you personally think the language is acceptable (or otherwise) , look very carefully at each and every word, then concoct some nonsense in an attempt to establish some alleged fundamental principle (s) governing the presence and relative position of each and every word in the sentence (or whatever) and proffer this as proof as to the validity of your original assertion.

This method is absurd and pedagogically useless. Try a systemic analysis for clarity and for the classroom.

There are 4 fundamental clause types in English: Inpendent, Dependent, Interrupting and Embedded, and only the first 3 of these operate at Clause Rank.

In the case of the original Clause Complex, we have a Clause level analysis as follows:

||| I met him || INDEPENDENT
||during the time when I was in high school||| DEPENDENT


We can analyse the clause in question Experientially as follows:

during the time CIRCUMSTANCE
when(NOT ANALYSED EXPERIENTIALLY)
I PARTICIPANT
was PROCESS
in high school CIRCUMSTANCE

Interpersonally as follows:

during the time when....in high school RESIDUE
(I SUBJECT was FINITE:PAST )MOOD BLOCK

and Textually as follows:

(during the time TOPICAL when TEXTUAL I TOPICAL) THEME
was in high school RHEME

There is most certainly a dupicating of function within this Clause Complex. You have the Circumstantial "during the time" duplicating the function of the Textual Theme "when" (or vice versa).

There is nothing fundamentally "wrong" with tautologies, as there is nothing fundamentally "wrong" with potato blight, but some might feel that such useless verbosity should not be encouraged in budding writers.

I make no comment as to the "structural soundness" or otherwise of this Clause Complex.

All I can say is that I'm not in the business of making insulting attacks on the mainly civil users of this forum, and as for verbosity...

...but I'd like to give it a try, for once.

You have made your comment on the structural soundness of this sentence. You've compared it to potato blight. That's good old-fashioned prescription in anyone's book of metaphors.

If my assertion is absurd, on what basis do you make yours - that redundancy in the Theme of a clause is unacceptable?

I'd be fascinated to know your definition of structure. (Well, to be honest, I wouldn't.) Even Halliday says that there are norms of usage. There are propensities (speaker side) and expectations (listener side). Otherwise, we'd still be grunting like baboons.

If you really understood what Halliday is about, rather than merely the mechanical mimicry of limited details of systemic analysis, you'd know that Halliday is saying (in opposition to formalists like Chomsky) that language is socially constructed, and, being so, language is shaped by the social and cultural needs of a community. In many contexts in the English-speaking world(s), the sentence ("I met him during the time when I was in high school") would be perfectly appropriate (i.e. serve its social purpose). Who gave you the privileged information that this was a fragment of written text - "budding writers"??? - and not something that might have been casually dropped in the course of everyday dialogue, where this "tautology" wouldn't raise any but the snootiest eyebrow?

Pedagogically useful? How do you think your systemic analysis would go down with a bunch of junior high students in Taiwan? Have you ever actually been in an English language classroom (as opposed to a lecture hall)? If you have, I pity the students that have had to endure your pomposity.

Your post is intellectual dishonesty masquerading as verbal prowess.

You've chosen a very apt name, prawn. We all know what most prawns are full of.

I wonder why I understand noel's take on this more that I do prawn's?