An Alternative View of Aspect

A tense is a change in the form of a verb that places the sense expressed in the verb in time. The third person singular of the regular verb walk is walks in the present tense and becomes walked in the past tense. Those are the only two tenses that the English verb has. To express the future, English has to press additional verbs into service.

As well as expressing time, the English verb can express the way in which the speaker or writer regards the sense of the verb in time. This feature is known as aspect. The English verb can express progressive and perfect aspect. Regular verbs express progressive aspect by taking the basic form of the verb, adding -ing to it and combining it with an appropriate form of the verb be. He walks becomes he is walking. Similarly, the perfect aspect is expressed by taking the basic form of the verb, adding -ed and combining it with an appropriate form of the verb have. He walks becomes he has walked.

Such constructions are customarily thought of as being made up of forms of the main verb, with be and have performing the role of auxiliary verbs. I propose an alternative view. He is walking, I suggest, is a sentence in which is is the main verb and walking its complement, and he has walked is a sentence in which have is the main verb and walked its object.

Change and Decay in All Around I See

What is the language coming to when one of our leading writers can use cheap as an adverb, broke and wrote as past participles and her’s as a possessive pronoun? The writer? Oh yes, Jane Austen.

More Participle Problems

Richard Hogg told The Queen’s English Society in March 2000 that The cats need fed is a Scottish construction, contrasting with ‘the English forms, either The cats need feeding or the more formal The cats need to be fed.’ He asked  ‘Should Scottish children who move to England be required to learn the English forms [and] what should happen if an English child moves to Scotland, and writes The cats need feeding? Should that be corrected to The cats need fed?’

I was reminded of this question on seeing a sign in a supermarket which read If you need anything slicing, just ask. Here, the Standard English form in England could just as well be If you need anything sliced, just ask. But the same is not true of The cats need feeding or, to use another example, My clothes need washing. My clothes need washed is not found in England. Does that make it non-standard? And if it is, why isn’t I’d liked this sliced, please non-standard?

How Many Make One?

When is plural singular? When two or more things are considered to be a whole. A headline on Times Online on 29 December 2009 had ‘Heavy snow and rain brings travel woe’. ‘Brings’? Shouldn’t it be ‘bring’? ‘Snow’ and ‘rain’ are two things, so why isn’t the verb plural? The answer is that the headline writer asks us to take ‘heavy snow and rain’ as a single meteorological phenomenon which together have caused the peregrinatory distress.

Sat Comfortably? Then We’ll Begin

On 20 April, 1653, Oliver Cromwell, addressing Parliament, said ‘It is not fit that you should sit here any longer! You have been sat too long here for any good you have been doing lately’.

‘You have been sat’ would now be considered non-standard, Standard English calling for ‘You have been sitting’. So it is that in the following two pairs, the (a) sentences are also thought to be non-standard:

1 (a) He was stood on the corner. 1 (b) He was standing on the corner.

2 (a) He was sat on a park bench. 2 (b) He was sitting on a park bench.

However, in the next two pairs both (a) and (b) are standard, but with different meanings:

3 (a) He was parked on double yellow lines. 3 (b) He was parking on double yellow lines.

4 (a) He was stopped at the traffic lights. 4 (b) He was stopping at the traffic lights.

3 (a) and 4 (a) describe stasis, while 3 (b) and 4 (b) describe motion. Could not the same distinction be applied to 1 and 2, the past participle suggesting a degree of passivity without the use of the passive voice? Wouldn’t the force of Oliver Cromwell’s speech have been less had he said ‘You have been sitting too long here’?

Is There Anything To It?

A poster has recently raised an interesting point about the use of the subjunctive on Linguaphiles. What do we make of one subjunctive form following another in a sentence that begins ‘If this were all there were to it . . .’? Some comments from American posters indicated some difficulty with the concept of ‘be to it’, but my comment, reproduced below, dealt with the subjunctive point.

A sentence such as

(1) ‘If this is all there is to it, I don’t think much of it’

suggests that that is indeed all there is to it, and that consequently my opinion of it is not high. On the other hand, if the suggestion that there is no more to it is purely hypothetical, then we could, at least in British English, very well say

(2) ‘If this were all there were to it, I wouldn’t think much of it.’

Such extravagant use of the subjunctive, however, would sound rather formal. British English increasingly avoids the subjunctive, and more likely would be either

(3) ‘If this was all there was to it, I wouldn’t think much of it.’ or

(4) ‘If this were all there was to it, I wouldn’t think much of it.’

It would, I think, be unusual to find

(5) ‘If this was all there were to it, I wouldn’t think much of it.’

Do You Think?

Momentarily this morning, I was puzzled by this remark on the radio: ‘We drink more than we think’. It took me half a second to realize that what was meant was ‘We drink more than we think we do’. There are other interesting possibilities: We watch television /shop / use mobile phones / talk / vote more than we think.

Recognition!

I am delighted to report that ‘Grammar for Grown-ups’ is listed as one of 100 Fantastic Blogs for Language Lovers. I am equally delighted to be in the company of Peter Harvey, Linguist. The list is a valuable resource and I must now find time to explore the other 98.

In the Mood for Modals?

When shop assistants have nothing else to do, they ask us, ‘Can I help you?’ (on those occasions when they don’t say, ‘You alright there?’). Would anyone reply on these lines?

Well, I have no knowledge of your physical or mental capacity, professional expertise, or training, so I can’t really comment on that. But if you’re asking me if I would like you to advise me on my prospective purchase, you should have asked my permission by saying, “May I help you”? And in any case, the answer is, “No”.

We wouldn’t, because we know that, ‘Can I ….’ in this context certainly does not indicate ability or its absence, but is used to make an offer, meaning, ‘Would you like me to …..?’ Can, like other modal verbs, is a versatile performer. Nobody seems to mind when a speaker uses must for deduction (‘People are putting up their umbrellas. It must be raining’) as well as for obligation (‘You must complete all fields marked with an asterisk.’) Why is there a problem with can?

On the two meanings of must, here’s a story (with apologies to those who may know it already). When Castro visited the Soviet Union, Kruschev showed him a new colleɡe buildinɡ. ‘This was donated by our friends, the Bulgarians,’ said Kruschev. They went on to inspect a new sports stadium. ‘This was donated by our friends, the Poles,’ said Kruschev. Finally they visited a new conference hall. ‘This was donated by our friends, the Hungarians,’ said Kruschev. Impressed, Castro said, ‘They must all be very good friends.’ ‘Yes, they must,’ said Kruschev.

Relatives Again

English makes a distinction, as in the following sentences, which seems not to be found in either German or French:

The house I saw yesterday was not for sale. (Relative clause defines which house we’re talking about.)

The house, which I saw yesterday, was not for sale. (Relative clause, being non-defining, contains no more than additional information, so can be removed without destroying the meaning of the sentence.)

In German and French it is impossible to tell which sense is meant:

Das Haus, das ich gestern gesehen habe, war nicht zu verkaufen.

La maison, que j’ai vue hier, n’était pas à vendre.

Unless someone can tell me otherwise.