[etni] re did/had erosion of the past perfect
- From: Doron Narkiss <doron.narkiss@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2009 12:15:37 +0200
> did/had: What do you think? Do errors like these portend a further erosion
of the
> past perfect?
Clearly in spoken native english there are painful attemtpts to speak
grammatically - in Michelle's examples the errors come from trying to do the
right thing, not from lack of caring - but since these are not always
successful, other options are chosen which can circumvent complex tenses.
These tenses, however, are unavoidable in some grammatical situations, such
as conditional clauses - and that's when the speakers' linguistic
hesitations emerge and errors occur. I have noticed that spoken english,
both native eng. and non-native varieties, tends to avoid complex tenses,
whereas in literary contexts they are used more often and with greater
precision. Even there, though, from what I've seen, there are differences in
the incidence of such tenses btwn "inner circle" writing and that of the
outer and expanding circles - but these have less to do with linguistic
competence (in any "circle" it's the publisher's editor's job to see to
that) than with the attempt to reproduce the syntax and grammar of a
non-english language, and finally the thought processes of a non-western
culture, while writing in english.
Doron
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