BS: English grammar question

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 16 Feb 09 - 09:28 AM

Tongue

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 16 Feb 09 - 11:02 AM

To get back to the original question, about sleep/slept, and weep/wept, etc:

I don't know why the e changes, but I have just noticed that when we make the past tense of a verb ending in p, we change the d to t. Say the following:

hoped
moped
hopped
developed

they all actually end in a t sound, not a d sound. (This keeps all the action near the front of the mouth, so it's easier.) I never noticed this before.

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 16 Feb 09 - 12:51 PM

Hmmm, I don't. Exaggerating, hoped comes out hope-d(uh), not hope-t(uh).

Which one of us is in the majority? Is this a regional disparity? Should we make an issue of -t vs. -d?

Pistols at 500 paces!

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: ard mhacha
Date: 16 Feb 09 - 02:01 PM

I have just come onto this Thread and Bobert`s suggestion that "George Bush had nothing to do with it", has me `doubled up`.

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 16 Feb 09 - 02:05 PM

As far as I know, the terms "strong verbs" and "weak verbs" are not used in the USA. We call them "irregular verbs" and "regular verbs," respectively.

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: peregrina
Date: 16 Feb 09 - 02:11 PM

Jim, yes, regular and irregular are the terms for contemporary English usage. But the origin of the difference is in Old English and the distinction there--in both US and UK handbooks of Old English grammar-- is that between strong and weak verbs. The strong verbs' principal parts show more variation, but a number of different regular patterns so they are not strictly irregular.

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: GUEST,jOhn
Date: 16 Feb 09 - 02:21 PM

waht all this is about?

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: Nickhere
Date: 16 Feb 09 - 02:37 PM

Maire- aine, it may have to do with phonetics. The examples you mentioned - keep, sweep etc., all end in an unvoiced consonant (place the palm of your hand over your throat and say 'p' 'k' 's' 'or 't' - be careful not top add vowels while doing this: if 'p' sounds like 'puh' or 'pee' while you're saying it, you've added a vowel. Now try doing the same with 'b' 'z' 'g' or 'd' - the latter should sound with an accompanying buzz / vibration - these are voiced consonants).

The general rule is that unvoiced consonants are followed by unvoiced consonants in regular verb 'ed' endings when pronouncing: that's why the 'ed' in Kicked, washed and stopped sounds like a 't' (Kikt, washt, stopt). After voiced consonants the 'ed' sounds like a 'd' - that's why moved, buzzed and gagged 'ed' sounds like 'd' (moovd, buzzd, gaggd).

I think the same thing is happening here, not only in the sound but also the spelling -

keep / sweep / creep - kepT, swepT, crepT   

compare Terry McDonald's

speed, seed, weed

Two of these are the infnitive forms of these verbs, and they are regular verbs so the past tense is formed by added 'ed'

seeded, weeded. These are pronounced with 'ed' as an extra syllable - seed'd / weed'd (and that;'s how they were written in Shakespearean times as well)

The first is irregular, the past is formed

speed - sped. But the infinitive form ends in 'd' - a voiced consonant.

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 16 Feb 09 - 02:55 PM

jOhn, my sympathies are with you. Phonetics have disappeared from the schools, as well as language history. It was still taught when I went to school, but that was ages ago, and my memory of such is gone.

Grammar still lingers, but use a style manual to keep up, you heah?

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: peregrina
Date: 16 Feb 09 - 02:56 PM

That's right about the consonants, but the vowel change has a different origin--it's the vowel alternation in the Old English strong verbs, called ablaut, a feature shared with other Germanic languages.

Ablaut patterns in the seven classes of Old English strong verbs
are explained in a fairly accessible way here:

here

This is all a matter of historical linguistics--not speculation or intuition--the verb forms are abundantly documented for Old English, which has many volumes of written texts extant.

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: GUEST,jOhn
Date: 16 Feb 09 - 02:58 PM

a styal manual?

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: peregrina
Date: 16 Feb 09 - 03:00 PM

No style manual needed, jOhn just a weblink to a bit of information!

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: Rowan
Date: 16 Feb 09 - 04:53 PM

No woop woop east?

Pardon the diversion, please. Oz was colonised (by English speakers) from the east, so all references to "the back of beyond" , "beyond the black stump" etc (even "back o' Bourke") carry an implication that you're referring to something "out west", where the pelican builds its nest. I suspect it builds on northern European folkloric notions about the west being somewhat mythical and/or unattainable.

So, while Woop Woop shares its existence with a lot of other places real or mythical, there can be no Woop Woop East and WW South or North are most unlikely; Woop Woop West is the real "boondocks", isolated "Hicksville", "Royston Vasey" equivalent.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Feb 09 - 07:07 PM

Woop Woop West is the real "boondocks",

Hence the internet's "www"...

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 16 Feb 09 - 09:07 PM

Thanks for explaining that, McGrath. I've often wondered...

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: GUEST,Slag
Date: 16 Feb 09 - 09:32 PM

The American Heritage Dictionary, 3rd edition, cw 1992, has "pled v. A past tense and a past participle of plead." Under the verb proper it is listed as a second choice and "pleaded" as first. Not wrong but definitely on its way out.

I don't know if it has been retained in subsequent editions but the AHD has an excellent brief history of the development of the Indo-European languages and an apparatus which appends to many entries showing the development of word groups based on the proto-language. It also mentions the Brown Corpus which is a statistical analysis of English language speech patterns of usage. If you Google "The Brown Corpus tag-set" you will get an idea of their strategy in doing this much heralded analysis.

ps. When is the last time you saw the word "flivver" in print? 23 skiddoo!

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: Rowan
Date: 16 Feb 09 - 09:42 PM

When is the last time you saw the word "flivver" in print? 23 skiddoo!

About 6 months ago, when I was reading a novel set in the 30s, I came across "flivver" and I last used the word skiddoo about a month ago when referring to the removal of huskies from Mawson, Antarctica.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: katlaughing
Date: 16 Feb 09 - 11:34 PM

I had a kid's book which had flivver in the title!

As to "Irish Celtic," Bryson, whose book I mentioned earlier, is a little confusing. On page 23 he calls it "Celtic," in general and notes where it used to be spoken, over large areas of Europe, etc., and how it is dying out, but "not dead." He goes on to say it occurs in "shrinking pockets of Galway, Mayo, Kerry, and Donegal in Ireland," etc. Then, on page 35, he writes about the "Gaelic of Ireland." He then interchanges it and talks of the "Celtic" language of Manx being dead and that the "Gaelic of Ireland" may be the next to go. As I said, written in 1991; I'd love to see an update about that.

And, since we are doing grammar stuff, please refresh my memory:

If I write using the word "had" in front of a verb, i.e. "she had made" instead of "she made" which one is considered more correct and which one is acceptable, if not both, and which is more common? And, what is the technical difference, i.e. tense(?)?

Thank you!!:-)

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: GUEST,Slag
Date: 17 Feb 09 - 01:40 AM

I'm shooting from the hip here but I believe that "had made" is "past perfect" tense as opposed to just plain old "past tense". The idea is that the action was completed at a point in time and is over and done with (grammatically incorrect, I know but, well...). Past tense means that what was made in the past might still be being made now. The Aorist tense in Greek is akin to that, signifying an action being started at some point in the past and continuing on into the present. Perfection means completion.

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: meself
Date: 17 Feb 09 - 03:27 AM

I think it's easier to think of the past perfect as being further back in the past than the simple past. You only use the past perfect when speaking of one action in the past in relation to another, it seems to me. So, "Yesterday I went (simple past) to the store; I had gone (past perfect) the day before as well." Or, to use katlaughing's example, "She made a post to Mudcat today; she had made many previously."

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: peregrina
Date: 17 Feb 09 - 03:46 AM

Both the perfect and the past perfect (or pluperfect) are single complete actions, neither any more than the other--in contrast to the imperfect past ('I was going to the store').

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 17 Feb 09 - 05:12 AM

peregrina:
yes but the past perfect is used to state that something is already in the past when discussing something in the past tense.
So to use Kat's example "She made a post to Mudcat today; she had made many previously."
She made a post today (in the past). At the time that she made that post she had already made many previously.
The second sentence relates to an action already in the past at the time of the first sentence.

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: peregrina
Date: 17 Feb 09 - 05:16 AM

Yes--I wasn't clear--of course the pluperfect is prior, but both are equally snapshots/punctual/aorist in aspect rather than continuous or incomplete.

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 17 Feb 09 - 09:41 AM

I like to think of the past perfect as "the past's past".

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: katlaughing
Date: 17 Feb 09 - 10:50 AM

Thanks, you lot!

So, in a fictional version of an oral history, if I used past perfect it would be more correct? I know this is in my head, somewhere as Mr. Grassfield and Mrs. Worcester (old teachers) made sure it was, BUT I do most of this without thinking. My new book is in the final stages of editing and I've asked my editor to watch out for all of the "hads" as it seems to me there are too many, but maybe not as most of the actions are indeed in the distant past, though the story is written as in its time...oh, now I am confusing myself. I may post an example, later today; my grandson is on his way over for now. Thank you all, very much!

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: meself
Date: 17 Feb 09 - 12:12 PM

Oh, kat (sigh!) - poor Mr Grassfield and Mrs Worcester .... The past perfect is only "more correct" where it's more correct. The issue is not how far back in the past the action is in and of itself, but how far back it is in relation to some other action in the past. Typically, but not always of course, fiction is written as having happened in the past. Now, if the narrator, having established that he is in the past, then speaks of something further back in the past, prior to the linear main plotline as it unfolds, then out comes the past perfect tense (your "hads"). For example: "Before I tell you about how Aunt Agnes wrestled down a charging bull, you need to hear what little Lucy HAD said to her THE DAY BEFORE."

If, on the other hand, your narrator is speaking in the present tense, then he will use the simple past to speak of action that took place before the present action: "I can't believe [present tense] it - Aunt Agnes is in a wrestler's crouch, jaw clenched, awaiting the charging bull. I suddenly remember what little Lucy said [simple past] to her YESTERDAY."

However, you will notice that many writers will find ways around using the past perfect in situations where it would otherwise need to be used almost continually in a text, e.g., a relatively long passage relating a character's history prior to his entry into the story. When this is done, it is because the past perfect gets too "clunky" (assuming the writer is grammatically competent). You will notice that the past perfect is rare in modern poetry, for this reason.

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Feb 09 - 01:18 PM

"I had made a mistake last Monday, so I was specially careful, and as a result I made no mistake last Tuesday."

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 17 Feb 09 - 02:48 PM

To simplify:
Jedge, I done wrong a spell back but I ain't a-gonna do it no more.

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 17 Feb 09 - 03:10 PM

When "had had" shows up (in writing or in your head) and might be misunderstood, it can be helpful to mentally insert a word like "already" or "previously" between them.

"John had told me that he had (already) had his breakfast."

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: s&r
Date: 17 Feb 09 - 06:19 PM

Smith where Jones had had had had had had had had had had had the examiner's approval.

Stu

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: Nickhere
Date: 17 Feb 09 - 08:53 PM

I forgot to mention that of course all vowels are voiced, which explains why speed and weed both end with a voiced consonant 'd' - since the vowel preceeding - /i:/ - is voiced (/i:/ sounds like 'ee' in sheep).

Past perfect is used in literature (and speech!) to fill in the background to events, to give a 'flashback' effect so to speak. It is the 'past before the past' so to speak. But that could be ten minutes, or ten millennia ago.

'Perfect' (derived from latin) translates into English as something like 'up to / before' hence present perfect refers to the period of time 'up to / before the present' while past perfect refers to the period 'up to / before the past'. All perfect forms imply a period of time over which there is no change in the situation or action of interest to us. Change in the past perfect is indicated using past simple:

"I had lived in London for 10 years before I MOVED to Paris"

note that the clause "I had lived in London for 10 years" can't stand on its own, as it assumed that something else must have followed this action.

Several languages (e.g French, Spanish and Italian) have forms similar to English perfect forms but are used differently: "io ho visto ieri" in Italian literally translates as "I have seen him yesterday" but obviously you can't use present perfect with past time expressions like 'yesterday' so the correct version in English would be "I saw him yesterday" just using past simple. On the other hand those languages also have different forms of the past for near or far off actions:

Ho avuto una macchina (I had a car, yesterday, last year)

Avevo una macchina (I had a car when I was 16)

English doesn't have that kind of remote past. The past perfect doesn't really perform that function as it simply refers to a period of time before a point in the past, which is uually connected in some way to that past event.

BTW, does this constitute thread drift?

That got me to thinking, I'm off to start a thread on the best grammatical / spelling howlers you've seen while out and about, or in books.

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: Nickhere
Date: 17 Feb 09 - 08:54 PM

Ahem... io l'ho visto

...sorry.

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: katlaughing
Date: 17 Feb 09 - 11:12 PM

Thanks, I think.:-) I'm going to wait and see what the editor has to say about it all. I've been working on it too much to see anything clearly at the moment or to be objective. When I said I do it without thinking, I meant it is ingrained thanks to my old teachers.:-)

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: GUEST,Slag
Date: 18 Feb 09 - 01:40 AM

"I had lived in London for 10 years before I MOVED to Paris"

or how about "I lived in London 10 years, then moved to Paris."

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: Nickhere
Date: 18 Feb 09 - 04:27 AM

That's be ok, too, Slag. Past simple plus past simple gives us a series of actions, one after the other in the order they are said / written. Past perfect may come after past simple syntactically as in "Before I moved to Paris I had lived in London for 10 years" but is still understood to preceed it chronologically. Since both mean essentially the same thing here, in this case, I think it would simply be a subjective style choice as to which form to use.

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: Haruo
Date: 18 Feb 09 - 04:57 AM

Reading this thread (and I still use leapt as a matter of course: I leapt into action etc.) I note a couple things. First of all, in Old English, at the time when there weren't any "regular" verbs in English, just strong and weak ones, the vowels that turned into "ee" and "ea" in modern English (which Uncle DaveO referred to as "the exact same sound") were quite distinct; they have merged into one, but at the time that the irregular verb systems were being put in place they were not the exact same sound, indeed not even particularly close to each other. I'm pretty sure "bleep" is a modernism, and one expects modernisms to have regular tense forms, but "steep - steeped" does seem a bit odd, at least to an American mind like mine, brought up to think of tea as something quaint. And then in the matter of "creep", while "crept" is the past where it's a verb of motion (or near-immotion), I think in its modern use as a verb of emotion the past is "creeped":

The way he crept up and licked her calf really creeped her out.

On the other hand, I think in the case of sneak it's the irregular past, "snuck", that's the modernism.

Aye, laddies, she's an odd one that English language.

Haruo

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: Penny S.
Date: 18 Feb 09 - 05:47 AM

I have been asked by children at times which is the correct of some forms and have had not the slightest idea. e.g. she leaned against the wall, she leant against the wall. Knowing the rules would have helped me, but not them. Notice the pronunciation of helpt.

I once had a day training for the Initial Teaching Alphabet, a brilliant wheeze for simplifying the learning of English, and noticed it fell down on some of these things. It was OK where some professional had done the transliteration, but as a teacher, I'd have had to write the stuff for display and so on. My particular bugbear was the schwa, for which they had no letter.

We had to write the story of Cinderella. I got stuck on her name, as the e and the a both needed the missing sign, and I was told that I should use the ITA e and a. Immediately undoing the principal of phonetical equivalence underlying the idea. I now realise that the terminal t and ed confusion would have done for it as well, because they would have gone for ed regardless of sound.

I have often thought that the nice thing about English is that we don't need to know the names of all those tenses and the complex forms that go with them but can string together weres and haves etc to place the action nicely in time, indicate whether it was a single or continuing event and so on just by ear.

I should have gone out by now, but have allowed myself to be distracted by the Mudcat.

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: meself
Date: 18 Feb 09 - 09:13 AM

'On the other hand, I think in the case of sneak it's the irregular past, "snuck", that's the modernism.'

Don't know how far back "snuck" goes, but until these degenerate recent days, it was classed as a "barbarity" (citation needed).

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 18 Feb 09 - 09:49 AM

For an example of the deliberate miss-use of a past tense for poetic reasons, there's the first verse of "Cân y Melinydd" where the use of the wrong past tense retains the meter & scansion:

Mae gen i dy^ cysurus
A melin newydd sbon
A thair o wartheg brithion
Yn pori ar y fron

I have a cosy cottage ,
A newly builded mill.
And three contented dappled cows
Are grazing on the hill.

Cheers
Nigel

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: katlaughing
Date: 18 Feb 09 - 10:37 AM


I have often thought that the nice thing about English is that we don't need to know the names of all those tenses and the complex forms that go with them but can string together weres and haves etc to place the action nicely in time, indicate whether it was a single or continuing event and so on just by ear.

Yes, Penny! Thanks for putting it so clearly.

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 18 Feb 09 - 11:33 AM

have often thought that the nice thing about English is that we don't need to know the names of all those tenses and the complex forms that go with them but can string together weres and haves etc to place the action nicely in time, indicate whether it was a single or continuing event and so on just by ear.
I would agree, but the standard of teaching is slipping so that children (and some teachers) can see no difference between:
I have
I got
I have got (or I've got)
I had
I had got (I had gotten)
etc.,

I wondered (16 years ago) why my son, instead of saying 'double it' or 'multiply it by two' was saying 'times it by two'.
On a parents evening I didn't get as far as asking his teacher because she explained one mark as being for a 50 question test, and "we take the score and times it by two to get a percentage"

There's a few of us pedants (boring old farts) who feel we are fighting a losing battle!

Cheers
Nigel

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 18 Feb 09 - 12:22 PM

"pluperfect tense" (eg "I had eaten")is what we called it, one of the three past tenses in English, along with the "perfect" (eg "I ate) and the "imperfect" (eg I was eating").

I gather the alternative terms are "past perfect", "present perfect" and "past continuous" - which seems if anything more confusing. I mean, "present perfect" for a past tense...

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 18 Feb 09 - 02:57 PM

Oxford English Dictionary-
snuck, chiefly U. S. pa. t and pple of sneak v.

Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary-
snuck, past and past part of sneak.

Haven't found how old 'snuck' is; late 19th c.? The origin of the word sneak is uncertain acc. to the OED, late 16th c. (1570 the earliest quote) in print. Shakespeare was an early user.

Barbarism? dear me, thats so 19th c.

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 18 Feb 09 - 04:03 PM

That one's analogous to take/took and speak/spoke

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: Haruo
Date: 18 Feb 09 - 04:26 PM

Probably even closer to stick/stuck, and perhaps introduced on that analogy by nonnative-anglophone immigrants for whom long e and short i were allophones of a single phoneme.

Nigel says "There's a few of us..." but I was raised to say "There're a few of us..." (construing "a few" as plural). When and where I grew up (Seattle, b. 1954) "snuck" was normal colloquial but incorrect formal usage.

Haruo

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: GUEST,Slag
Date: 18 Feb 09 - 05:34 PM

Right you are, Nickhere! In the spoken word "had" usually gets an emphatic stress or pause which emphasizes the fact that the subject is in the past.

I don't know how many of you are familiar with ASL (American Sign Language) but it is interesting that the grammar is often shown by facial expression. You can learn a lot about language origins by taking a class or two in this fascinating field.

Signing varies from country to country so the are equivalent course somewhere near to you. You ought to see the deaf singing folk songs! It is really beautiful!

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: meself
Date: 18 Feb 09 - 06:55 PM

"Barbarism? dear me, thats so 19th c."

19th c.? Oh, yes: before the barbarians won ...

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: Penny S.
Date: 19 Feb 09 - 06:02 AM

Not just the teachers. The children cannot hear differences such as those between f or v and th. Or see them, if demonstrated and given a mirror. And cannot be got to understand that would've is would have not would of.

By the way, what tense is "I would have been going to..."?

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: s&r
Date: 19 Feb 09 - 07:21 AM

Subjunctive mood

Stu

Subject: RE: BS: English grammar question
From: Penny S.
Date: 19 Feb 09 - 07:36 AM

Well, yes, but start with yesterday, and finish with what prevented me, and it's some sort of past tense as well, isn't it?

I do like the subjunctive.

Penny