A tiny squeak of protest

[JuanTwoThree]

This is as good a place as any to let off steam about accepted terminology.

I don't like Present Simple because in many other languages Simple is contrasted with Compound, making Present Simple Negative a contradiction. Infinitive is daft, there's no evidence that such a thing exists in English. Writers can't even agree if the "to" is part of it or not. We contrast "must" with "have to" and say "Because I want to" which suggests that the "to " has a far stronger bond with the preceding verb anyway, and what's more has meaning. I privately think of it as "the First Column" (like in irregular verb lists) but I don't think it'll catch on. Base Form has its followers.

Present Continuous would be a much better term for Present Simple. "I live in Spain" is a damn sight more continuous than "I am living". All that guff about continuums between two times leaves me cold. Progressive? It doesn't ring any bells .

If we call it the Past Simple in "If I went to school tomorrow, ...." because our first encounter with it is "Yesterday I went to school" , in the same way as we go on calling our friend David "Hairy Dave" when he is bald, on that basis we should be calling the Present Simple the Imperative because we probably encounter the latter first. We should perhaps call it the Past Subjunctive when that's what it's being. Remote Form is a trendy term used by the same people who say Base Form. Second Column anybody?


There's lots more that makes my blood boil. If this is applied linguistics would it be too much to ask for terms that help rather than hinder? But which?

[Duncan Powrie]

That seemed more like a roar than a squeak! I think I'll leave this to our resident lion-tamers (I am just a humble mouse-catcher). Larryyy! Stephennn! (etc)

[revel]

Hey Juan, and Duncan!

Well, I don't like it when, in the schools, they tell the kids that its an "infinitive" and an "infinitive with to". And I realize that I'm probably only complicating things by telling them that I'll be referring to them as "root" and "infinitive" which is always the "root" preceded by "to". I get excited when they refer to the present participle as the "gerund" even when it's part of a verb-construction, when I use "gerund" to speak of a noun-form of a verb. And using the three-column irregular verb list as anything but a reference tool really makes my hair stand on end!

Yet, to a good extent, some kind of terminology is needed in speaking about language. I suppose I could say "descriptive word" instead of "adjective" or "adverb", but there is so little debate over just what an adjective or adverb is that those are pretty useful terms when illustrating structure on the blackboard. That we can't always agree on what to call each part of a sentence just illustrates how wonderfully complex a sentence is. As many autopsies as have been done on the human body and we still haven't encountered the "soul"!

You are right to roar (or squeek if you prefer) Juan. You would also be right to establish from your first class just what explicatives you are going to use, being prepared to understand those already known by your students. They will not grow up in an isolated test-tube of language learning, will probably see half a dozen books before they finally stop studying English, will have to accept that, as a science, it is not pure, that there is room for change, improvisation and discussion. At least screaming about it helps to avoid TMJ. It's curious to me how in a profession that really doesn't present life-threating risks, so many ESL teachers (at times myself included) are stressed out....oops, that's a generalization, for all you ESL teachers who have understood the Zen of our profession, my appologies!

peace,
revel.

[Roger]

The Present Simple contrasts with the PRESENT PERFECT - in my book. Some may elect to call the perfect tenses "COMPOUND TENSES", but PERFECT has always been in use as well.

[JuanTwoThree]

Roger, look at it from the students' point of view. It's very likely that in their language the normal contrast is between simple tenses, one word tenses in other words, and compound tenses, aux. plus verb in whatever form, of which perfect tenses are examples. It's confusing, for them, to talk about Present Simple Negative because, again for them, it's contradictory to have a simple tense with an auxiliary.

[woodcutter]

Juan, I think that new terminology would be the worst thing that could happen. Students are already confused by having to learn "present continuous" and "present progressive", the most important thing is to avoid one more term being widely used. The labels that we give these things are not that important, and it is better that the students understand that the label will not necessarily help them understand what is going on. In fact, if the terminology differs from their L1, then that might be positive in encouraging them to refrain from direct translation.

[LarryLatham]

Sounds as if you guys should get together with Richard Lederer and write a new book on language terminology.

No question about it! The terminology we use in English teaching (oh, pardon me, Applied English Linguistics)* is in a bit of a mess. The biggest problem is that there is little consistency in the terms. I say "continuous", you say "progressive"...I say "remote form", you say "past form"...etc. Woodcutter is right to warn that new terminology would do more confusing than helping. And yet I do introduce new terminology in my classes. Call me crazy, and I wouldn't argue. But like Juan, I think the conventional terms are nonsensical. Where's the redeeming value in a "present tense" that has nothing to do (directly) with present time? How do you reconcile with students that sometimes "past tense" is used when referring to future time? What kind of hokum is "present tense used for the future"?

So I call them "base form", "first form", "second form", "third form", and "fourth form". These correspond to "infinitive", "present tense", "past tense", "past participle", and "present participle". I do remind students what the correspondence is, and do that with enough frequency throughout the semester so that they are aware. And I also tell them that "first", "second", etc. are only for use in my class. I also let them know why I am introducing new terms: I simply think they are more sensible, and less misleading. It seems to work for me and my students, but I suppose it might not for other teachers and classes. It's a judgment call for each of you.

Larry Latham

*Sorry about that. I just can't help it. I'm on a kick about Applied Linguistics, for some reason. I probably need more beer.

[woodcutter]

Well, Larry always seems to have one of these classes of infinite duration that seem to be the thing in ideal-ESL land. I seldom see my students for that long, and I don't want to be remembered as the weird terminology guy.

[JuanTwoThree]

You are all absolutely right. More terms would confuse things still further and I take the point that their being different from L1 to English may not be such a bad thing. And I'm relieved to hear that I'm not the only teacher with idiosyncratic private terminology. In fact I suspect that acceptable terms like "ing form" and "will future" have trickled up from chalkface teachers (trickled up?).

But don't have good sense get in the way of a nice rant. Present Simple, Future Perfect : Who was the spark bright who had the idea brilliant of putting adjectives after nouns in the names of tenses? Edmund Spenser?

The same bright spark who decided that there were four main conditionals but that the fourth would be called third because the first would be called zero?

I was told a long, long, time ago that the first to look at English were classicists who imposed a Latin/Greek or German/Anglo-Saxon terminology. Were they embarassed to find how straightforward it was in comparison and decided to muddy the waters a bit? Though not always: " we have no more business with a future tense in our language, than we have with the whole system of Latin moods and tenses; because we have no modification of our verbs to correspond with it" (Priestley 1762).

Straight off the internet so don't be amazed at such erudition (though I did surprise myself by remembering enough to search for Priestley).

[Stephen Jones]

Dear Juanonetwothree

I think we all agree that there is a problem of terminology in Descriptive lingugistics. More or less everybody is agreed that the old "Latinate" system in inadequate, but there is absolulely no agreement as to what it should be replaced with, and each school of linguistics imposes its own, normally incompatible terminology.

I do disagree with both you and Larry about the inadequacy of the terms Present Simple and Past Simple; sure they are going to pose problems for speakers of other languages, but so is any system that attempts to be even minimally descriptive. As for Juanonetwothree's complaint that the Present Simple negative confuses some of his language learners (native French speakers) I would suggest the takes advantage of the confusiton to ram home the idea that in the English tense system negatives always carry auxiliaries, ang that the Past and Present Simple affirmative are the only parts of the verb system that do not have an auxiliary.

There does appear to be considerable agreement over the English tense system. Most people are agreed that there are two tenses Present/Close/first and Past/Remote/Second and that those tenses can be affected by one or more of the two aspects Continuious/Progressive and Perfect/Perfective. This is the standard English verb system and we also have a separate modal verb system where a modal auxiliary can be followed by the infinitive/base form/main verb/call it what you will preferably in Klingon and that form can be modified by one or both of the two above menitoned aspects giving us say may do/have done/be doing/have been doing.

Teaching students at intermediate level I actually put this diagram up on the board and get students to copy it down; I inform them they may come across other ways of describing it, but that they will find this way the simplest and most accurate. With this diagram firmly in mind, I see no problem in using the standard names for the tenses "Present Perfect", "Past Simple" and so on. What I do avoid is describing the modal system in terms of tenses, though I will let the word "future" creep in, like the neighbour orschoolfriend, you haven't invited to the party, but don't dislike enough to go to the hassle of booting out.

[LarryLatham]

but so is any system that attempts to be even minimally descriptive.

Maybe it doesn't need to be descriptive, Stephen. Maybe just a consistent system of labels would work fine.

No disagreement with your description of how the tense system works, Stephen, but still, wouldn't you agree that there is substantial potential for confusion from the names: "Present" tense (whether or not modified by aspects) and "Past" tense (modified or not) when we use the same terms to describe different parts of time as we humans experience it? After all, few native speakers are clear on this. Heck, too many teachers even are a little fuzzy on it! Probably, I guess, because of the confusing terminology.

Larry Latham

[revel]

Hey all!

After finally having to sit one of my "bosses" down and tell him that I was sick and tired of last minute meetings being called right when I have to go to the library, shop for some vegetables, go to the gym and on top of it all, clean the house, and what's more, my contract isn't very pleasing to me (have had to sign a special, new clause that says I will agree to up to 100 hours of teacher-training) and when I won't be paid for those meetings anyway....thought I'd join in some animated linguistic chat with you folk, it's always a pleasure.

I'm going to steer this away from the poor verb for a moment (we are always on about verbs at times, and they're so simple in English!) (Maybe too simple, maybe that's the rub) to the personal pronoun. Working in Spain, I am always facing the confusing chart:

I ---> We
You ---> You
He ---> They
She ---> They
It ---> They

Which to make closer to how English really works I transform into:

I
you
we
they
-------
he
she
it

And the only reason it falls into that simplified form is that d*mn 3rd person singular "s" (and, well, "be" but that's a case on its own)

I agree, we could use Klingon in class to describe these things if we want to (I actually do an interesting exercise in which I put sentences on the board, but in many of them I put nonsense words, to illustrate that, no matter what that word might be, its "part of speech" can usually be guessed by where it is in the sentence, or question, or negative.)

I think I'm actually glad there is no one, universal, perfect set of terms for explaining these things to our students. The personal pronouns simply aren't divided into "singular" and "plural" as they are in other languages and to force such a grouping just has students learning "you" twice and "they" thrice. And that might be the problem of standardizing terminology. Beside the fact that it would be hard to get us to agree to use it, all of us, it might just turn into the monster that the latinizing of English was for centuries (and even, it seems, nowadays).

If each of us is consistent in our use of this or that term to describe this or that idea or concept the students will finally catch on and follow us, since we will probably be repeating these terms over and over in class. If it helps the student to understand, learn, use English then it works for you. If it seems to confuse, maybe that's when a different approach is needed.

Finally, I agree totally with Stephen's comment: "I would suggest the takes advantage of the confusiton to ram home the idea that in the English tense system negatives always carry auxiliaries, ang that the Past and Present Simple affirmative are the only parts of the verb system that do not have an auxiliary. " Do you consider that compound rather than simple? Well, call it that if you think it will help your students. But make sure they get the real point, that without that "auxiliary" the question or the negative just won't be "correct", grammatically at least!

That's all folks!

peace,
revel.

[LarryLatham]

Yup!

I'd have no argument at all if students would stay with the same teacher until their mastery of grammar was substantial.

However, there is the difficulty, whether we like it or not, that you have the students for several weeks, and then they go to another teacher, and another. Where consistency would help is in passing the students from teacher to teacher. If teacher "A" says potatoe, and teacher "B" says potahtoe...well, students get confused (at least for a time).

But what revel and Stephen say does make sense in the final analysis. As long as a given teacher is consistent within his own classes, students can and will make the adjustment between teachers. (That's why I've decided that it's OK for me to call the verb forms by names that suit me better than "present tense", etc.).

So, I guess JuanTwoThree had it right to begin with: It's only a small squeek of protest. No roar.

Larry Latham

BTW revel, I also do that nonsense word sentence thing and get the students to tell me what part of speech all the nonsense words are. They're always amazed that they can do this, and pleased. I didn't think anybody else did that!!

[JuanTwoThree]

Thanks for the advice about stressing the need for two word verb tenses (most of them) as against one word verb tenses (two simple affirmatives) but you're preaching to the converted. We just have different ways of doing it. It was a good guess Stephen but my students are Spanish, making questions as hard as if not harder than negatives. Very few of our learners at any level can be relied on to never make a question with only intonation: making the ramming in of when the auxiliary is necessary even more essential. ¿Everybody sees what I mean?

[JuanTwoThree]

Oh, testing understanding with nonsense words is called a wug-test, according to Pinker. If you can believe anything he says.