Opinions on past-perfect?

[yowser]

citation needed.

I am not aware of any Indo-european language that employs it, and only became aware of it when Elif Batuman mentioned it in one of her books (cannot recall whether 'The Possessed" or 'the Idiot' - I believe the latter.)

She discovered, with a little frisson of excitement, that Hungarian (which her boyfriend spoke, a notoriously difficult language to learn, for anyone) had this tense and employed it the same way as in her ancestral mother tongue Turkish.

In either of these languages (and I suspect many more) if you say 'Mary went to the store' and you SAW her going, you'd use a different tense (evidential) than if you only knew she did so from some other perspective (someone told you.)

It functions as an empirical 'truth index' - you know it's true since you experienced it with one of your own senses. I love it.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

I am not aware of any Indo-european language that employs it, and only became aware of it when Elif Batuman mentioned it in one of her books (cannot recall whether 'The Possessed" or 'the Idiot' - I believe the latter.)

She discovered, with a little frisson of excitement, that Hungarian (which her boyfriend spoke, a notoriously difficult language to learn, for anyone) had this tense and employed it the same way as in her ancestral mother tongue Turkish.

In either of these languages (and I suspect many more) if you say 'Mary went to the store' and you SAW her going, you'd use a different tense (evidential) than if you only knew she did so from some other perspective (someone told you.)

It functions as an empirical 'truth index' - you know it's true since you experienced it with one of your own senses. I love it.

That's really cool, and I can see how much difficulty that could add to learning the language.

 

[alohadave]

The pluperfect (shortening of plusquamperfect), usually called past perfectin English, is a type of verb form, generally treated as a grammatical tense in certain languages, relating to an action that occurred prior to an aforementioned time in the past. Examples in English are: "we had arrived"; "they had written".

The word derives from the Latin plus quam perfectum, "more than perfect". The word "perfect" in this sense means "completed"; it contrasts with the "imperfect", which denotes uncompleted actions or states.

TIL about pluperfect and what perfect refers to in grammar.

 

[StillStunned]

I am not aware of any Indo-european language that employs it, and only became aware of it when Elif Batuman mentioned it in one of her books (cannot recall whether 'The Possessed" or 'the Idiot' - I believe the latter.)

She discovered, with a little frisson of excitement, that Hungarian (which her boyfriend spoke, a notoriously difficult language to learn, for anyone) had this tense and employed it the same way as in her ancestral mother tongue Turkish.

In either of these languages (and I suspect many more) if you say 'Mary went to the store' and you SAW her going, you'd use a different tense (evidential) than if you only knew she did so from some other perspective (someone told you.)

It functions as an empirical 'truth index' - you know it's true since you experienced it with one of your own senses. I love it.

Neat. It reminds be a bit of when I was learning Greek at school (the OG, to use modern parlance). I counted something like 213 different forms for a single verb.

And no, I still don't know why my parents thought I'd benefit from learning Greek and Latin.

 

[alohadave]

And no, I still don't know why my parents thought I'd benefit from learning Greek

It is useful if you ever visit Greece...

 

[StillStunned]

It is useful if you ever visit Greece...

Well, I can read the letters, but Homer and Euripides didn't teach me how to order in a restaurant.

 

[AlexBailey]

Using past perfect when switching between time frames seems very natural, writing primarily in past perfect would make the passage below untenable, no?

--------------:

The '68 Malibu rumbled down the street and pulled up into Katie's driveway.

Jack had spent the most of the summer restoring it in hopes of rekindling their relationship with a reminder from their romantic past. He was hoping for the same reaction as when he picked her up for the prom.

Katie was non-plussed. That car had been his main focus while she was diligently studying at university, it may have been a sexy status symbol for a couple of high school kids but now she was looking to the future, the thought of awkward unprotected sex in the vinyl back seats no longer held the the same appeal.

 

[Britva415]

I believe the recommended way of using the pluperfect is to limit its use to the first and final sentences of the section.

I like this and find it both palatable and feasible.

 

[Britva415]

=
He remembered when they met. It had been a Tuesday. He was on his way to work when she caught his eye. Her hair was red, and her skirt hugged her arse like a second skin.

He ran after her and caught up. She was pleased when he complimented her buttocks, and obligingly lifted her skirt to give him a better look. That had been the beginning of the sappiest romance of his life.
=

I feel like this example doesn't even need the first "had."

"It was a Tuesday" would serve just fine, I think.

 

[Britva415]

I find past pluperfect tense to be a massive turn-on.

Some like the imperative mood.

 

[alohadave]

I feel like this example doesn't even need the first "had."

"It was a Tuesday" would serve just fine, I think.

I'm glad you rephrased that, because "It been a Tuesday" would have sounded awful.

 

[Britva415]

I am not aware of any Indo-european language that employs it, and only became aware of it when Elif Batuman mentioned it in one of her books (cannot recall whether 'The Possessed" or 'the Idiot' - I believe the latter.)

She discovered, with a little frisson of excitement, that Hungarian (which her boyfriend spoke, a notoriously difficult language to learn, for anyone) had this tense and employed it the same way as in her ancestral mother tongue Turkish.

In either of these languages (and I suspect many more) if you say 'Mary went to the store' and you SAW her going, you'd use a different tense (evidential) than if you only knew she did so from some other perspective (someone told you.)

It functions as an empirical 'truth index' - you know it's true since you experienced it with one of your own senses. I love it.

Thanks for the "citation" - the evidence OHW asked for see what she did there?

In all seriousness - is the evidential linguistically regarded as a tense? I can see how it could be, since it could only ever be some flavor of "past," but it also sounds like it could linguistically be a mood.

 

[StillStunned]

I feel like this example doesn't even need the first "had."

"It was a Tuesday" would serve just fine, I think.

No, you definitely need it. Perhaps this example doesn't make it clear, but you need the pluperfect to take the reader a step back. Strictly speaking, in my example (which was just a few lines I threw together, not designed to be the best example), if you say, "He remembered when they met. It was a Tuesday," you're just giving two statements of fact that could be unrelated. You could also add, "He liked bananas."

Look at this sentence instead. "He remembered when they met. It was winter now, but it had been summer then."

You could also say, "He remembered when they met. It was a Tuesday. He'd been on his way to work when she caught his eye." Somewhere you need the pluperfect.

 

[Britva415]

No, you definitely need it. Perhaps this example doesn't make it clear, but you need the pluperfect to take the reader a step back. Strictly speaking, in my example (which was just a few lines I threw together, not designed to be the best example), if you say, "He remembered when they met. It was a Tuesday," you're just giving two statements of fact that could be unrelated. You could also add, "He liked bananas."

Look at this sentence instead. "He remembered when they met. It was winter now, but it had been summer then."

You could also say, "He remembered when they met. It was a Tuesday. He'd been on his way to work when she caught his eye." Somewhere you need the pluperfect.

I guess that's probably right, as a matter of grammatical correctness which an editor would flag.

As a matter of usage, I think the intention would be unambiguous if the pluperfect were skipped in a lot of cases like this.

Not that I'm advocating for "write the way people talk."

 

[Britva415]

Not that I'm advocating for "write the way people talk."

Though, sometimes I do. Some (of the poorer) writers seem to have some kind of idea of what writing is supposed to sound like, and try to write that way, and it just so glaringly doesn't serve the story and reads "ohh so very very" clunky. Then they go even further and they even write in this style when they're writing dialogue - as if the characters, regular people in regular situations, would spontaneously talk the same way as their mis-idealized narrator narrates.

So yeah, sometimes I do advocate for "write more like how people talk, especially when your characters are talking."

 

[alohadave]

Then they go even further and they even write in this style when they're writing dialogue - as if the characters, regular people in regular situations, would spontaneously talk the same way as their mis-idealized narrator narrates.

So yeah, sometimes I do advocate for "write more like how people talk, especially when your characters are talking."

Dialogue should be kind of like how people talk. Not exactly like, but they shouldn't all sound erudite and using perfect grammar with no pauses and always having perfect word choice.

It's a balance.

 

[onehitwanda]

It is useful if you ever visit Greece...

What if he came from Greece and had a thirst for knowledge?

 

[StillStunned]

What if he came from Greece and had a thirst for knowledge?

That's why I hang around here, with all you common people.

 

[HordHolm]

That's why I hang around here, with all you common people.

But do you dance, and drink, and screw, because there's nothing else to do?

 

[StillStunned]

But do you dance, and drink, and screw, because there's nothing else to do?

Well, one out of three. Sometimes two.

 

[Britva415]

But do you dance, and drink, and screw, because there's nothing else to do?

Well, one out of three. Sometimes two.

Who knew? Is that by choice, or "boo hoo?"

 

[StillStunned]

Who knew? Is that by choice, or "boo hoo?"

I'm just really crap at dancing.

 

[Britva415]

I'm just really crap at dancing.

Rats, I thought people might catch on and continue the rhyming.

 

[StillStunned]

Rats, I thought people might catch on and continue the rhyming.

Sorry, I don't rhyme much. Or reason either.

 

[SimonDoom]

But do you dance, and drink, and screw, because there's nothing else to do?

Don't you mean:


Had you danced, had you drunk, and had you screwed, because there had been nothing else to do?