tense and time (part2)

iconoclast · Post by **iconoclast** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 3:30 pm

8. Where there's a will, there's a way.

Some of us know in our bones that tense and mood truly are form. Members of the "last medieval generation", those baby-boomers who had to study Classical Latin and/or Greek at school before the advent of modernity, will probably less than fondly remember that it is possible to sing out the tense, mood, person, and number of any verb under the sun, as in 'Now, then, Sullivan, give me the third person plural imperfect subjunctive of esse, and don't dither, boy'. And easy meat it was - if you could master the system. The Latin form escapes me now, but in Spanish the third person plural imperfect subjunctive of ser is (ellos/ellas/Ustedes) fueran, and in German the third person plural past subjunctive of sein is (sie/Sie) wären. Alas, the third person plural past subjunctive of be is more than a tad slow rolling off my tongue. One rarely commented-upon fact speaks volumes about why this could be so. Contemporary grammars of English never provide for learners the exhaustive indicative and subjunctive paradigms that are always to be found in grammars of highly inflected tongues like Spanish, and for good reason since it is hard to conjure up non-existent forms out of thin air. To be sure, a formal dismissal of subjunctive is a more nuanced enterprise than our swift dispatch of future, but English possesses no true subjunctive system today like those of German or Spanish.
Subjunctive is - was - form and not meaning, as would be obvious did it still truly exist. Future, on the other hand, is meaning and not form, for English and German get along quite happily despite lacking future tenses. In effect, disentangling tense from time shows up the redundancy of a "notional" approach to these matters. No longer need learners be bamboozled by fictitious "future tense", even less by "will plus present tense", and still less by "idiomatic future tense", or by impossibly "tenseless" modals and slippery "subjunctives".
Much more elegant and to the point is the startling sleekness of verb formation:

· The first - or only - verbform in the verbphrase carries tense, and all other verbforms are non-tenseforms.
· Tenseforms are formally either present-tense or past-tense, be they one-word main verbs or be they auxiliary verbs - regardless of the time reference they are involved in.
· All auxiliaries combine with other verbforms according to strict, unvarying patterns.
· Tense formation exhibits a non-/perfect and non-/continuous binary symmetry.
· Infinitive formation exhibits the same non-/perfect and non-/continuous binary symmetry.

Nonetheless, this rosy picture may not be so obvious to learners, especially if we consider the "traditional" verb fare they are served in beginners courses. First comes the present simple of be with nounphrase and adjective, next comes do-employing present simple for professions and habitual actions, plus modal can for ability, and then comes present continuous for incomplete actions, followed by the past simple of be and common "regular" and "irregular" verbs, and by past continuous in the "interrupted" past, all of which is often topped off by present perfect simple for "life experience". This is a formidable list of need-to-know structures, but each one is formally different from the previous one. What might be a more "form-friendly" sequence?
The first item on our menu, be, unfortunately happens to be the only verb in the whole of the English language that does not employ do in interrogation and negation. But, if we still start with be, it makes sense to reinforce it by moving immediately on to present continuous, especially since the patterns of be plus adjective and of be plus present participle are one and the same, and many present participles free-lance as adjectives, anyway. Patterns might then be less easily mixed up when do-employing present simple is subsequently presented, and can might serve as a bridge, as it takes infinitive like do.
No doubt learners are always a little fazed by 'What do you do?', but again it might make sense to move immediately on to past simple to reinforce the pattern. Here it is hard to avoid high-frequency "irregular" verbs, including the do-less past simple of be. However, a moment's reflection shows that, excepting be, the only "unusual" form that these verbs actually possess is their affirmative past simple (as well as past participle). In every other respect their formation is regular as clockwork, so learners should first be served the reinforcing interrogative, negative, short answer, and negative interrogative (?) forms so as to avoid immediately using the label "irregular", which is really a misnomer. Last on the menu comes past continuous combining and contrasting with past simple. An incursion into perfect is unnecessary at this level. Flaws will doubtless be seen in this sequence, too, but it shows that alternatives are possible.

At the end of the day, learners must be helped to get beyond the distractions posed by the two main "spoilers" in the system, namely auxiliary-less be and anomalous auxiliary do. As some learners never seem to recover from the shock, I strongly suggest that we take a leaf from the grammar books of German and Spanish so that learners may avoid the formal quagmire they so often seem to get stuck in. We should spell out to our learners:

· the nature of tense,
· the nature of verbphrase formation,
· the binary symmetry of tense and infinitive formation, and
· how be and do differ from it.

We should also list:

· the affirmative, negative, interrogative, short answer, and negative interrogative (?) tense forms, the infinitive forms, and all other forms of our spoilers be and do, and
· all forms of a "regular" verb like turn in combination and contrast with "irregular" verbs like have, eat, cut.

We can do more to help learners understand the workings of form. Consider that there are thousands of forms that have one grammatical function but two or more meanings, and that there are thousands more forms that have more than one grammatical function, and that in each function may have one or more meanings. For less advanced learners, to take very simple but potent examples, high-frequency baseform, -ed form, and -ing form can be mystifying cases in point. The baseform love may function as count or non-count noun or as stative verb, and as verb may be present-tense, infinitive, or "imperative". The form loved is always a verbform, but may be past-simple or past participle, as which latter it may occur in the verbphrase and in gerund and infinitive structures, or adjectivally. Finally, eating may be gerund, which has noun function, or present participle with the same verbal and adjectival functions as past participle. Think, too, of an exasperating baseform like cut, which is count noun or dynamic verb, and as verb may function as infinitive, present-tense, past-tense, past participle, or "imperative"! It is small wonder that learners get confused.
Learners will always commit verb formation errors for a variety of reasons. Nevertheless, the handy possession of a visual aid of the type proposed above could go a long way in helping learners to produce correct verbforms on a consistent basis, and to internalise the principles involved. Even in our era of "communicative" learning, effective communication still depends not only on fluency but also on accuracy. A thorough-going exposition of the true nature of verb formation would surely give learners a chance to start off on the right foot, always going forwards.

9. The Missing Link.

As the thrust of this paper has been to formally rescue tense from the clutches of time, the area of time reference has gone unexamined. For there is one final twist to this whole business, over which the grammar gods are no doubt splitting their sides, and likely their infinitives. Having clearly established the formal workings of verbs, we are now free to consider what connection might exist between verbphrase and time reference. Interestingly, we find that it is a far from arbitrary one. Instrumental in creating the connection between the form of a verbphrase and its "meaning focus" is the non-/perfect and non-/continuous binary symmetry of tense and infinitive formation, which in relation to time reference usually goes by the name of "aspect". It may be possible to square the circle after all, but only on - and in - contemporary terms.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

· Amis, M. 1992. Time's Arrow. New York: Vintage International.
· Chomsky, N. 1957. Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton.
· Givón, T. 1993. English Grammar (Vol. I). Amsterdam: J. Benjamins.
· Norris, J. 1983. Language Learners and their Errors. London: Macmillan.
· Pinker, S. 2000. Words and Rules. New York: HarperCollins.
· Quirk, R., & Greenbaum, S. 1990. A Concise Grammar of Contemporary English. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
· Ramsden, H. 1959. An Essential Course in Modern Spanish. London: Harrap.
· Walker Chambers, W., & Wilkie, J. R. 1970. A Short History of the German Language. London: Methuen.

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 5:29 pm

The arguments over when each form is introduced have been going on since at least the mid seventies.

One of the main ones is whether to introduce the present simple before the present continous. Textbooks take different views over this. It does allow for more natural conversations to be introduced earlier though. One of the main problems with teaching the present continuous early on is that in real discourse its most common use is to talk about the future.

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 8:00 pm

"Subjunctive is - was - form and not meaning, as would be obvious did it still truly exist."

Very droll, a subjunctive in a sentence questioning its existence. All past subjunctives contain meaning: an implicit negative, from "If I had more money" to "Had we thought about it before, we'd have ....." and "They arrived before I had had breakfast".

I was hoping for something iconoclastic, like "do does did" is a semi-modal (defective verb) meaning "It is my contention" .

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 9:53 pm

"They arrived before I had had breakfast".

Is there a subjunctive there?

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 10:10 pm

It's an elusive little bugger but I think so, provided that I never got to have breakfast.

"He drew before I had drawn" (I never did)

"He drew before I drew" (Did I draw?)

Actually I'm getting less sure by the second.

Duncan Powrie · Post by **Duncan Powrie** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 11:47 pm

JuanTwoThree wrote:"He drew before I had drawn" (I never did)

"He drew before I drew" (Did I draw?)

I'm not up for debating whether this is a subjunctive or not, nor do I want to go off on another wild goose chase "inspired" by your interpretations, JTT.

I'd just like to ask why you assume that "I" never actually drew in your first example? It would be more natural to drop the "drawn" (ellipsis, I keep on saying elide or ellipt but maybe these pseudoverbs irritate people?), but the "had" is still ambiguous. If we wanted to remain as concise but be a lot clearer, we could just replace "had" with "could (draw)".

Without that simple change, I myself would probably assume "He" was just quicker and got to point his barrel at "me", and would therefore be able to get off a shot before I myself could do those second and subsequent actions. The only way to be sure I HADN'T drawn would be to add, as I said above, "could", or more words to that effect: "He drew before I('d) even had a chance to reach for my pistole, let alone draw it from its tight, squeaky new leather holster... and then proceeded to riddle my cowering ass with bullets."

El Merriassi.

With your second example, it's kind of the same thing, but they could've first played rock-paper-scissors to decide who'd draw first, then played "One gun Two gun Three gun Four...".

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 8:18 am

Quite so. I am now even less convinced by my own example.

Going back to breakfast:

"They arrived before I had breakfast"

"They arrived before I had had breakfast"

Does the second mean that I never breakfasted? I'm no longer so sure.

Or would we say "could" anyway and it's a non-starter? Yes and yes.

Xui · Post by **Xui** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 5:46 pm

JuanTwoThree wrote:Quite so. I am now even less convinced by my own example.

Going back to breakfast:

"They arrived before I had breakfast"

"They arrived before I had had breakfast"

Does the second mean that I never breakfasted? I'm no longer so sure.

Or would we say "could" anyway and it's a non-starter? Yes and yes.

Past Perfect expresses the action happened before another past. So we may have only:
Ex: "They arrived before I had breakfast."
as what happens in before-clause must happen later than the action in the main clause.

And Past Perfect is a must in after-clause:
Ex: "They arrived after I had had breakfast."

Nevertheless, if not in story writing, we may have:
Ex: "They arrived after I had breakfast."
Here after-clause in Simple Past only serves a time frame for the main clause.

After-clause and before-clause can place before, after, or even in the middle of, the main clause:
"Before I had breakfast, they arrived."
"After I had had breakfast, they arrived."

I have spent a lot of time in locating something like:
Ex: "They arrived before I had had breakfast"
But I failed. Everyone knows Past Perfect happens before a Simple Past. Now with internet, however, it seems that you can easily search and find exceptional examples. And yet, before that, I still hold my humble opinion as above.

Xui

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 6:05 pm

Well keep looking. It's in Swan, something like "They arrived before I had packed my bags". It's even mentioned in an earlier thread.

Try this:

"I was offered the job before I had been there for a year.

So it exists, no doubt about it.

Xui · Post by **Xui** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 8:32 pm

JuanTwoThree wrote:Well keep looking. It's in Swan, something like "They arrived before I had packed my bags". It's even mentioned in an earlier thread.

Try this:

"I was offered the job before I had been there for a year.

So it exists, no doubt about it.
====================

I want to copy an old discussion about "time comparison" to here.

Both Past Perfect and Past Continuous come from "time comparison", happening before the former Simple Past. You may please neglect the whole part. Only the part in blue is to answer your question.

=====================
I want to add a few notes to the Past Continuous.

We decide tenses by now. Therefore inside a story, a past circumstance, there are no actions incomplete by now. In it, if we say the action is incomplete, it is compared with its precedent action:
Ex2: "He came near a village. A farmer greeted and talked to him. They were going into it together."
== GO happens before TALK and continues with TALK. This is the only characteristic of Past Continuous.

Also, inside a story, there is no future. Therefore I maintain there is no "Future In The Past". But a person has argued with me that, in a story, WAS GOING TO is Future In The Past:
Ex: "He came near village. A farmer walked with him into it. The sky was going to rain."
== WAS GOING TO just functions as an ordinary Past Continuous. Even at present, we have a trouble to say whether we must have Future Tense or not, so how can we be so sure that, in story, in the past, we must have Future Tense?

In my observation, there were three situations where comparisons cannot be performed:
(A) with BE, or notably in passive voice:
Ex: "He came near village. A farmer walked with him into it. The weather was hot."
== Also, WAS GOING TO is one of this kind.

(B) in negative:
Ex: "He came near village. A farmer walked together with him into it. The farmer didn't put on a hat even it was shining."
== Whether wearing a hat or not is prior to WALK. But in the negative, it doesn't compare. Nevertheless, the negative using Pluperfect is not infrequent:
Ex: "He came near village. A farmer walked together with him into it. The farmer hadn't put on a hat even it was shining."
=====================

There is also a (C) point, but I know it is irrelevant here.

I hope you may provide also the former sentence to "I was offered the job before I had been there for a year", then you may have a better understanding as to why there is Past Perfect in before-clause. The main verb of your example is BE, so is free of time comparison. The whole of your example, however, describes a case happened before a Simple Past, which I suppose is missing here.

As I have hinted, one can easily search and found these examples on Internet. With them, you may have a better argument on your side.

I have also copied unnecessary parts here because I want to say I didn't make up an excuse instantly.

Xui

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 8:59 pm

They offered me the job before I had been there a year.

They gave me the promotion before I had worked there a fortnight.

They fired me from my job before I had worked there a month.

They offered me a rise before I had worked there a day.

They made me a copy of the key to the gold-plated executive bathroom before I had worked there a week.

GAME OVER

Xui · Post by **Xui** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 9:05 pm

JuanTwoThree wrote:They offered me the job before I had been there a year.

They gave me the promotion before I had worked there a year.

They fired me from my job before I had worked there a year.

They offered me a rise before I had worked there a year.

They made me a copy of the key to the gold-plated executive bathroom before I had worked there a week.

GAME OVER

Very good. What a relief.

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 9:42 pm

Who won?

The structure definitely exists.

I think there's an implicit negative. "They deactivated the bomb before it had exploded" is some kind of unreal past/3rd conditional or whatever.

Xui · Post by **Xui** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 9:56 pm

JuanTwoThree wrote:Who won?

The structure definitely exists.

I think there's an implicit negative. "They deactivated the bomb before it had exploded" is some kind of unreal past/3rd conditional or whatever.

Who can tell? There is one more reason, the (C) point I have mentioned, why we don't follow time comparison. What is it? If you know, you won. If you don't, who knows?

Do I look green to you?

What if I list the (C) point here that can explain your examples? You will admit you lose?

Xui

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 10:24 pm

It's not about winning or losing. I just wondered if you thought I thought you were right.

The structure exists. It's clearly the opposite of any conventional understanding of "past perfect is more in the past than the past simple" .

First you couldn't find anything like it.

Then you could explain it by the presence of "be" but there are no "be's" in my examples .

Now you can explain it by something that was irrelevant minutes ago.

I think it's more to do with " I would have packed my bag if they hadn't arrived" equals "They arrived before I had packed my bag" which can't be explained by time sequencing, because "I never got round to packing by bag" so it's past as unreality/ remote of hypothesis/past subjunctive or what you will.

But I'm not sure, because I don't often "prove" or "show" or "explain"or "maintain" etcetera. I'm just a middle-aged highly experienced polyglot TEFL teacher with a degree in English Language and Literature so I tend to "think" or "suppose" . Which makes me the loser against such certainty and clarity.