Teacher Discussion Forums

Dear all,
Please help to see what is the mistake in the following sentences:

1) He was wounded in a car accident.

2) He opened the letter when he had got home.

3) He asked the boy what did he say.

4) The cricket ball pierced the window.

Thanks.

1) seems to be to do with the semantics of the verb: woundings are more the result of direct and deliberate attacks by another human (likely armed with a weapon other than a car!), so it would probably be more appropriate to say 'injured' or 'hurt'. But perhaps the law (courts etc) would say different.

2) seems to read better if the 'had' is removed: He opened the letter when he got home. Perfect aspect would probably go better with a clearer "sequencer" like 'after' (that is, 'when' seems more "punctual" or "simultaneous" or whatever, at least in this context).

3) is an instance where the past perfect (and inverted!) construction would actually be better: He asked the boy what he had said (??He asked the boy what he did say). But I am sure that the original 'He asked the boy what did he say' - "direct" question word order - could and would pass unnoticed in casual conversation. (About the only other "problem" might be an arguable ambiguity in who the second 'he' is referring to, which a pathological rephrasing to e.g. 'He asked what the boy had said' "could" solve ~ though the problem then might become who he was asking! But 'He asked the boy what the boy had said' seems to imply there are two boys, etc etc LOL*).

4) again has to do with semantics and protypical meanings and thus usages. Cricket balls aren't particularly sharp and thus sort of incapable of truly piercing, and glass windows generally too brittle to be pierced even by sharper instruments - generally they crack, break and smash into pieces before they get to the "pierced" stage! But actually, I myself do not object very much to the original sentence (though I might still advise somebody who'd written this sentence to check in a dictionary for the probably more usual usage of 'pierce').
http://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/pierce

*I guess if the meaning of e.g. 'He asked the boy what he had said' really were "What he asking had said", then something very long-winded would be called for e.g. 'He asked the boy to repeat what he had said back to him' (not 'himself'), but how often do you hear phrasings like the last?!

I'm not really helping here, but it's quite funny that I just happened to have been reading a short article by Dave Willis (ie. TBL Dave Willis) in which he specifically highlighted the potential problem with past perfect that teachers can cause.

That is, teachers often say something along the lines of "We use past perfect to talk about an action that happened earlier than another action in the past". That can be true, but is misleading, and causes learners to make mistakes like:

He opened the letter when he had got home.



Just coincidence that I'd never thought about it before today, and then it happened to be mentioned both here and in the article I read this morning.

In case anyone's interested. This is the article I was talking about.

Learning Processes and Teaching Strategies
Dave Willis

http://www.willis-elt.co.uk/books.html