Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

This is an irrelevant comment on a side issue of the wayyiqtol discussion.

I find there are problems with these descriptive grammarians' views of
English. For example, in the sentence:

    1) He said he'd been drinking when the accident happened.

how does the "he'd been drinking" fit into the various alphabet soups, ETs,
Cs etc? Here am I telling you about what Peter told me yesterday. We have
my shift to the past containing Peter's shift to the past containing a
still prior situation.

The various attempts to classify the English perfect are usually destined
to fail when describers try to apply some point to the form, which is
contrary to its nature. As I understand it the semantic content of the
English perfect (with one exception) precludes being pinpointed with any
notion of reference time. These ideas are incompatible. The English perfect
is related to a reference time, but it conveys the notion of prior to a
reference time, so that

>(1c) At sunrise Peter will have arrived.

is for me clearly astandard English. (Other people's views on the matter
would be welcomed.) I don't understand what is being conveyed in the
statement. The best I can make out is:

    2a) By sunrise Peter will have arrived.

ie, prior to the time referenced by sunrise. I don't think this was intended:

    2b) At sunrise Peter will arrive.

but, as I said, a point in time precludes the perfect. The one exception
deals with the "Past Perfect", which in English is an ambiguous form.
Consider:

    3a) She said, "I've seen Peter."
    3b) She said, "I saw Peter this morning."

and let's report these:

    3c) She said she'd seen Peter.
    3d) She said she'd seen Peter that morning.

English is unable to supply a consistent form to cover the past past of 3d.
In some languages there is a different form for each of the verbs found in
the Past Perfect here, 3d being represented by the "pluperfect" in some
languages. (Italian now has the vestiges of such a system with its
"trapassato prossimo" and "trapassato remoto".) The following needs a clear
context to render it acceptable in English:

>(1d) At sunrise Peter had arrived.

The reason why there is so much trouble with grammar and why it has stopped
being taught in schools is that late Restoration scholars attempted to
shoehorn English into Latin descriptive grammar formats which turned out to
be inadequate. Just for example Latin had three tenses while English has
only two, a past (marked form) and a non-past, and that "past tense" is
also used as an unreal marker (along the lines of a subjunctive)! This is a
case of using a square peg to fit a round hole.

    4) Were I free to choose, I'd live in Tahiti and work on the internet.

Just a rerun on the English perfect: it is analogous in operation to the
any/some system. "Some" indicates definite quantity while "any" deals with
potential quantity. In past situations the "past tense" deals with a
definite time and event, whereas the "present perfect" deals with
establishing a definite event, eg

    5a) Have you seen Doctor Strangelove?

ie is there such a past?

    5b) No, I haven't.

ie there is no past.

    5c) Yes, I saw it years ago.

and we've established the event. Naturally this is shortened response, a
longer response being:

    5d) Yes, I have. I saw it years ago.

and immediately shift to the definite event form. You can see that the
perfect is ideal for introducing new information about an event.

    "Here is the latest news: Boris Yeltsin has just resigned.
     His decision was based on the realisation of his fundamental
     failure to come to grips with reality..."

Under normal circumstances applying the notion of a "point in time" (or any
other term for locating the action contained therein) to the English
perfect is patently wrong. Even the term "perfect" applied to it is
inappropriate, considering:

    6a) He's run four kilometres.
    6b) He's been running.
    6c) *He's been running four kilometres.


Be it sufficient to say that an English perfect related to any event at any
given reference time will supply some "before that time" information.

    "I came to Italy in 1984. I hadn't studied the language and
    couldn't speak a word."


Cheers,


Ian