Lameen Souag of Jabal al-Lughat has a fascinating entry on the use of be as a suppletive form of go, but only in the past participle: you can say I’ve been to Finland or I’ll have been to Finland five times, but not *I’ll be to Finland or *I am to Finland. I’ve used the construction all my life, but never really thought about how it works; Lameen finishes up with this thought-provoking bit of research:
Google does reveal a couple of instances: “I’ll be to bed in a minute”, “I’ll be to work way early”, and perhaps most strikingly, “I’ve been to more than half of the counties, and in the next six weeks, I’ll be to the other half of the counties”. So it seems we have a change in progress. Does this depend on the region? Will it culminate in a complete merger of “go” and “be”? Are there any parallels to this outside English? What do you think?
And while you’re at the mountain of languages, don’t miss his latest post on classical Kanembu and its relation to Kanuri and Arabic:
Most strikingly, since vowel length is non-phonemic in Kanuri, it seems to use vowel length to indicate high tone instead; thus, for example Arabic al-‘aakhirah “the afterlife” has been borrowed as láxíra, and thus gets spelled as لاخِيرَ. As far as I know, this would make it the only Arabic orthography to mark tone.
don’t know if it’s exactly what you mean, but in English you (or at least I) say things like “I went to the movies.” “I went to the doctor’s” etc while in Polish you use ‘be’ (być) instead:
Byłem w kinie dzisiaj. (I went to the movies today. lit “I was in the cinema today.”)
Byłem u lekarza. (I went to the doctor’s, literally “I was at the doctor’s today.”)
Well, as you point out in your translations, we can also say “I was at…” in English. The distinctive thing about the construction under discussion is that you use “to” with it, something impossible with “be” in its normal sense. Note that you can use “be at” in any tense or form (he’s at, I’ll be at, you were at, &c).
Well you can say “I went to the doctor’s” in Polish to, the meaning is just different (as it is in English for me).
But I’ve have to say I really doubt if any Slavic or Romance language has anything like the English construction “I’ve been to Spain.” I wouldn’t be surprised if some other Germanic language(s) do(es) though.
Long knock-down dragouts on this subject on the newsgroup fr.lettres.langue.francaise
Purists deplore “j’ai été à Paris” but it appears that many people say it in just that manner. Search “avoir été / être allé”, the latest thread to deal with it from an intial post on 2 July 2005.
In Spanish, “fui” is a past of “ir” (to go) and “ser” (to be). Problem solved.
Of course, you could say “I’ll be to Finland before he realizes I’ve stolen his boat.”
And I’ve just realised that there’s no past participle of the verb to be (είμαι) in Greek, so that I’ve been doesn’t exist as an expression.
There isn’t really an equivalent for to either, but that probably has something to do with the relatively declension-friendly and preposition-unfriendly nature of Greek.
What’s the situation with other declension friendly languages?
I think what is working here is a rule in English that mandates that you use the semantically stingiest formulation. We use ‘get’ the same way vice ‘go’.
There is a general preference for this kind of parsimony at work in strings of nouns for instance, which is why we find long strings in German to be a little awkward and comical. It is probably a general cultural value – English understatement versus German overstatement. Was anything ever so over-engineered as the ashtray in a Mercedes?
Russian does the same thing: “Ia byl v teatre”/ “Ia khodil v teatr”.
I wonder whether there’s a problem displaying the Arabic on my Mac. The rightmost character in لاخِيرَ. is disconnected from the other characters, not connected the way I would expect Arabic to be. It looks like an upside-down cause ribbon. In isolation — ل –it looks like the letter J.
It happens sometimes with me also….the characters are not displayed well. I’m looking out for the solution right now.
Russian does the same thing: “Ia byl v teatre”/ “Ia khodil v teatr”.
No, that’s not the same; it’s as if Russian were to say “Ya byl v teatr,” treating byt’ as a verb of going.
This is actually a sticking point here in Japan where I teach middle school English. Damned if they can explain it, but the editors of my textbooks noted at least the frequency of the expression as the usual equivalent of “itta koto ga aru”, which literally renders “I have gone”. I do my best to counter the tendency, but it’s treated so prominently that students often fail to learn the past participle “gone”, and rarely encounter “been” in its original meaning, as in “I’ve been at school all day.”
This means that in effect, they do acquire the verb as “go-went-been”, and I bet many decent Japanese speakers of English go their whole lives this way and native speakers never notice. Which supports the idea that “been” has partially supplemented the verb.
As to the origin, from what I understand, in parallel to “he’s gone”, “he has gone” used to have the connotation “and he’s still there”, in contrast to which “he has been” conveyed merely the experience of having been in a place at some point in the past. It’s understandable how such a distinction could start to crumble, though it still kind of makes sense to me.
I wonder what Lameen’s source was for this utterance: “I’ve been to more than half of the counties, and in the next six weeks, I’ll be to the other half of the counties”
This does not strike me as native American English. You would finish the thought with “I’ll go” or perhaps “I’ll have been to the other half of the counties”, meaning at the end of the six-week period. I cannot imagine saying or writing “I’ll be to the other half of the counties.” Do any native speakers disagree?
Now I see the source is a Senator from Wyoming. It still strikes me (A New Englander) as a very odd utterance. Is this Mountain English? Or should we just discount anything Senators say on principle.
LH: “No, that’s not the same; it’s as if Russian were to say “Ya byl v teatr,” treating byt’ as a verb of going.”
But, conversely, khodil, as a multidirectional verb of motion, also carries the meaning of “was in” (I was in the theatre, but left).
In the English, the only thing that’s confusing us, perhaps, is the preposition (“to” as opposed to “in”). The meaning in the Finnish example is virtually the same as “was in”….
BTW, Vanya — totally agree, that is not native English (at least not to this native Englisher).
elessorn: ‘”he has gone” used to have the connotation “and he’s still there”‘
At least for me, it still does; I don’t think I could write “I’ve gone to Finland” unless it was on a note I left behind for somebody.
pm215 – I agree. To me the difference is still valid – “I’ve gone” means I have not yet come back. “I’ve been” means I have come back. I think most native speakers make this distinction.
Could you? I couldn’t. “I’ll be halfway to Finland…”, or similar, but not “I’ll be to Finland…”.
Are there any parallels outside English? said someone above.
Answer yes! Cornish! (That for languagehat).
In modern Cornish dialect, which is often a direct translation of the old Cornish language, you may still hear some Cornishmen saying, “I be to Devon tomorrow” or whatever.
Tim May: ‘Could you? I couldn’t. “I’ll be halfway to Finland…”, or similar, but not “I’ll be to Finland…”.’
I agree it sounds better with the ‘halfway’, but I still think I could say it. For example:
A: “Will you be home before he realizes you’ve stolen his boat?”
B: “Hell, I’ll be to *Finland* before he realizes I’ve stolen his boat.” (Emphasis on Finland.)
I agree this would still sound better with a ‘halfway’ or something, but I think I would still allow it without it.
Perhaps this is a regional thing. I grew up in California. The senator who had the sentence about the counties is from Wyoming. It sounded a little odd to me, but not quite wrong. I’m pretty certain, though, I would never use it without some time limit, possibly implied. “We’ll be to Finland by tomorrow morning”, etc.
Ñongratulations !
I know the year is young, but this gets my nomination for word of the year (or decade, whatever).
I love, love, love this word!
Ñongratulations !
Oops, now that you’ve deleted the comment spam I was reacting to I look like a blithering idiot (I’d like to think that that’s a change, but I’m going to ask for a majority opinion or anything).
Michael, what do you care how you look? Not an idiot, that’s for sure. Blithering idiots, here and elsewhere, are very proud of their every word.
Speaking of [favorite] words…
That’s a funny post!
Let me adduce the syncretism of Spanish fui as the preterito of ser and ir both. Especially that it’s in the past perfect form only. You’ve been in a place if you’ve gone there innit, and the converse is hard to avoid.
(It’s clearly irrelevant that modern Spanish uses estar for being in a place).
The OED covered this in detail in the revision of be in 2010, far more fully than in the old version:
I didn’t know the use with simple past (example: “I was this morning to buy silk for a night-cap”) was not obsolete in Irish English.
The sense d.(a) is the only one that sounds a little strange to me, and the quotations are all Rightpondian:
My intuition feels fragile and I don’t know if I can trust it: is this a BrE vs. AmE thing? If it didn’t develop until the 1780s, it could be.
@ktschwarz: Your intuition is right that that usage is definitely recognizable as non-American. The prototypical example would be something like, “The charwoman has already been.” (I have a vague memory of an American character saying something like that in a British comedy show, betraying the Britishness of the actor, or at least the writer. I specifically remember Elaine Stritch occasionally using locutions that no American ever would naturally on Two’s Company; I always wonder why American actors in situations like this don’t demand a change in the dialogue.)
I adduce just for the record εἶμι (“go”) and εἰμί (“be”), which are surely more different to ancient Greek ears than to our own and diverge as we run through their conjugations.
Shakespeare has constructions importing “go” (or similar) that do without any form of “go” or “be”:
BAGOT: No; I will to Ireland to his Majesty.
SILVIA: Sir Eglamour, I would to Valentine,
To Mantua, where I hear he makes abode; […]
HAMLET: I must to England; you know that?
GRATIANO: And I must to Lorenzo and the rest;
But we will visit you at supper-time.
PISTOL: Go, clear thy crystals. Yoke-fellows in arms,
Let us to France, like horse-leeches, my boys,
To suck, to suck, the very blood to suck.
Three examples in this speech:
ANTONY: Get thee gone.
Say to Ventidius I would speak with him.
[Exit SOOTHSAYER]
He shall to Parthia. Be it art or hap,
He hath spoken true. The very dice obey him;
And in our sports my better cunning faints
Under his chance. If we draw lots, he speeds;
His cocks do win the battle still of mine,
When it is all to nought, and his quails ever
Beat mine, inhoop’d, at odds. I will to Egypt;
And though I make this marriage for my peace,
I’ th’ East my pleasure lies.
[Enter VENTIDIUS]
O, come, Ventidius,
You must to Parthia. Your commission’s ready;
Follow me and receive’t.
The second instance here is different and interesting:
SOMERSET: It shall be so; he shall to Brittany.
Come therefore, let’s about it speedily.
Oh, fascinating – that’s preserved in German. The way I understand it, in Present-Day English, will, must, can, shall and perhaps others are modal verbs and must be followed by another verb. In German, “want” must be accompanied by a wish, “must” by an obligation, “can” by an ability, “be supposed to” by something you’re supposed to do – but these need not be expressed as verbs. Ich will nach Irland, ich muss nach England, ich muss zu Lorenzo, ich soll nach Parthien and, while I’m at it, ich kann Englisch – entirely unremarkable.
Lass(t) uns is too northern for me to know if it can be used the same way.
Very much current in Norwegian:
“Jeg vil til Irland, til hans majestet.”
“Han skal til Partia.”
“Du må til Partia.”
“La meg til Frankrike” doesn’t work in the standard(s), but I think there are dialects that do it.
Oh – lass(t) uns nach Frankreich works just fine if it’s taken literally: “allow us to go to France”. Compare “let me out!”
(Standard) Danish does the same as Norwegian and German, no wonder. Jeg skal til bageren og jeg kan tysk, and so on. But not ?lad mig til bageren or ?jeg kan til bageren, those need a non-modal verb too.
https://revistas.um.es/cfi/article/view/109191 argues that “has been to” is not a suppletive form of “go” but rather a particular sense of “to”. Dunno how this argument interacts with similar evidence from other languages.
@David Marjanović: The use of modals without a (bare) infinitive, and some other kind of adjunct instead, is not obsolete in English but merely archaic. The construction appears, as noted above, in Shakespeare and other sources with somewhat archaic diction.* This, at least for me, makes a real difference. When I encountered the same constructions in German, I immediately understood them via calque-translation, and I doubt that I was alone in this. (An example from my high school German teacher, which seemed to be understood perfectly well by everyone in class: “Oh, Mutti, mein BH ist kaput! Ich muss zur Penny’s!”—although there were some pragmatic questions for fifteen-year-old boys about what it would mean for a bra to be “kaput.”)
* At 1:14:51, you can hear this and some other archaic locutions delivered by Meriadoc (voiced by Casey Kassem, of all people): “I must to her aid!” This passage is not from Tolkien’s original, but the Rankin-Bass script tried to mirror the tone of Tolkien’s text, using his specific verbiage when possible or substituting similarly toned material. In this case, the original, as perceived by Merry, was probably too dark for a 1980 cartoon:
Let me adduce the syncretism of Spanish fui as the preterito of ser and ir both. Especially that it’s in the past perfect form only. You’ve been in a place if you’ve gone there innit, and the converse is hard to avoid.
Preterito/preterite (as said the first time), not past perfect (for which ser has había sido and ir has había ido).
I’d say it’s obsolete but more widely known than I thought, then.
Interesting. I’d say zum Penny. I’m aware there’s a lot of regional variation in how to say “to a supermarket”, but I didn’t know that variant.
@Terry K, the conventional names for the Spanish tenses are at a variance with the usual English terms for verbal tenses and aspects. The pretérito indefinido does connote past tense and perfective aspect, in contrast to the pretérito imperfecto which is past and imperfective. Maybe I should have said “past perfective” to distinguish the preterite from the tense called “past perfect” = pretérito pluscuamperfecto, which (as indicated by the Spanish term) is even more past than the former.
I’d say zum Penny. I’m aware there’s a lot of regional variation in how to say “to a supermarket”, but I didn’t know that variant.
zum Penny yes, also zu Penny, zu Rewe … in Cologne. zur Penny sounds strange to me, because die Penny does.
The zum comes, I assume, from the association with Supermarkt. Der Penny / der Rewe in der Subbelrather Straße.
Or Markt directly; wasn’t Penny even called Penny-Markt once?
@Lars Mathiesen. The English label “past perfect” refers to tenses with forms of “have”. To apply this English language term to other than the Spanish forms with “haber” (which are equivalent) doesn’t make sense, nor have I ever seen it used that way (and, yes, I’ve studied Spanish a good amount).
Well, the pretérito is a past tense, and it is perfective as that is usually understood. As I said, traditional tense names are not aligned with linguistic terminology, and when I tell you that I meant it in the linguistic sense, it’s no use to reiterate facts about traditional tense names. I know those but reserve the right to use other terms.
@David Marjanović: Mr. Chapman’s example was in German, but the supposed speaker (actually a specific girl in the class) was located in America. (Sometimes we pretended to be in German-speaking Europe, but the default was to speak in German about our actual surroundings.) So the store in question was J. C. Penny, often referred to as “Penny’s.” The store is named after James Cash Penney, a man, but nobody knows that. So maybe it should technically have been “zum Penny’s,” but the fact that Penny is a girl’s name may have pushed it to the feminine dative zur rather than zum. The English possessive suffix (cognate to the German genetive marker –s) only complicates things further. (Not that Mr. Chapman never made gender mistakes in unusual case applications. I remember he once passed something to a make student, saying, “Das gehört der Rosito.”)
Part of the trouble is that, unhelpfully, the technical aspect term “perfective” does not mean the same as “perfect” at all: the concepts are entirely orthogonal to one another, though in many languages not all of the theoretically possible combinations are actually feasible.
English even has imperfective perfects: “I have been saying this for years.”
The English preterite (or simple past) is actually ambiguous between perfective and imperfective:
“I sang that aria beautifully just now.”
“I sang in the choir throughout my university days.” (habitual imperfective)
The English past continuous is imperfective too:
“I was singing when the police arrived.”
Generations of English learners of French and Latin have struggled with the fact that those languages express past habitual exactly like past continuous, whereas English expresses past habitual exactly like past perfective.
Cecini “I sang” (also “I have sung”, to confuse matters even more, as Latin has no separate perfect)
Canebam “I sang”
Canebam “I was singing”
To me “I have been saying this for years” is common or garden imperfective. What’s so perfect about it? Just that it’s a have + form?
No: “I was saying this for years” implies that I’m still around, still potentially saying it. It is semantically perfect. English does indeed express this with “have”, but it is not simply a fancy variant: the choice is meaningful.
Thus “He’s been saying that for years” is not possible if “he” is, in fact, dead; unlike “He was saying that for years (until I finally snapped and killed him.)”
“Perfect” is basically “past, but with current relevance”; what actually constitutes “current relevance” can be a tricky issue, though.
Many African languages (including, inevitably, Kusaal) have a “discontinuous past” which is a sort of anti-perfect, denying current relevance:
M ɔnbidin summa.
“I was chewing groundnuts.”
This is only true if I’m not doing so any longer. It’s like the opposite of “I’ve been chewing groundnuts”, which implies either that I might start again at any moment, or that the evidence is scattered there all around me.
Most languages (Kusaal included) have no special form for this “imperfective perfect”, and just use a present. Hence the foreign learner’s “I am living/I live here in London for several years now” for the correct “I have been living here in London for several years now.” Contrariwise, English learners tend to get flummoxed by “J’habite à Londres depuis plusieurs années.”
…and one of the difficulties in learning English is that current relevance suddenly becomes irrelevant as soon as you mention a point in time:
I’ve read that book (and now I know what’s in it, so I can join the ongoing conversation about it, therefore present perfect)
I read that book yesterday (point in time, simple past, relevance is irrelevant)
Yes, in English (but not, I’m told, Spanish) the perfect is not compatible with a specific time reference.
Kusaal often uses perfective verb forms without any tense marking (unlike Russian, in which perfective and present are incompatible.) The Kusaal construction with dynamic verbs is either “present perfect” in sense, or like the English “simple present” used “performatively” (the English simple present, like the simple past, can be either perfective or imperfective-habitual, but not imperfective-continuous):
Saa da niya.
sky TENSE rain.PERFECTIVE
“It rained.”
Saa niya.
sky rain.PERFECTIVE
“It has rained.” (The grass is still wet; or perhaps I’m explaining that despite current appearances, this is not a desert.)
M siakya.
I agree.PERFECTIVE
“I agree.”
“I was saying this for years” implies that I’m still around, still potentially saying it.
Just to double-check, this was a typo for “I have been saying this for years”, right?
Oops. My first example at 7:25 should read “I’ve been saying this for years.”
[Ninja’d by kt: YES, kt.]
Yes, in English (but not, I’m told, Spanish) the perfect is not compatible with a specific time reference.
What does “not compatible” mean here? We can easily put the perfect and a specific time reference together in a sentence:
“Have you had lunch?”
“Sure, we’ve had our lunch at 12:30 pm as usual.”
An acceptable alternative to “we had our lunch”; the perfect in the question gives extra licence to it in the answer.
In US English there is a greater tendecy to manage without the perfect:
“Did you have lunch?”
The perfect is far less likely in an answer to that question, in US or non-US English.
The situation is indeed more complicated than my statement suggested.
The relevant stuff in CGEL is on pp144ff; CGEL distinguishes “experiential” perfects from “simple” perfects, an example of the former being
“Have you seen Jim?”
Although this implies that Jim is still alive (and “you” are still alive, too), “in the salient implication I will have in mind a much shorter span than the time of his visit to our vicinity” (and “Yes!” would not be a cromulent answer.) Although the time span extends up to now (hence the use of the perfect) the question is actually quite likely to elicit the reply “When, exactly?”
They go on to say that in such cases the perfect allows for the inclusion “under restrictive conditions” of a time adjunct, essentially that the adjunct is “a crucial part of a potentially recurring situation” (as in your example), or that the timespan is itself potentially under discussion. They point out that
“We’ve already discussed it yesterday.”
is fine, but *”We’ve discussed it yesterday” is not.
To confuse the issue further, the simple perfect, like the simple present and the simple past, is ambiguous between perfective and habitual-imperfective senses. The restriction only applies to the perfective sense, not the habitual, so it’s fine to say
“We’ve had lunch here at 12.30 every day for the past eighty kalpas.”
It’s a wonder anybody can speak English at all, really.
@de
Is something like *we’ve had our discussion/talk/audition/cake and eaten it/ yesterday really ungrammatical? Or do these for me somehow imply something like the “already” of your example?
I think it rather turns on what you mean by “ungrammatical” (an issue we have discussed in extenso elsewhere.) “We’ve eaten our cake yesterday” I think comes under the “experiential” get-out clause in any case, though: but there would have to be a particular stress on “yesterday” in honour of this interpretation.
In other words, I think it’s OK as
“We’ve eaten our cake yésterday.”
but not as
“We’ve eaten our cáke yesterday.”
still less as
“We’ve éaten our cake yesterday.”
whereas “We ate our cáke yesterday” and “We áte our cake yesterday” are fine (if inane.)
Sure, we’ve had our lunch at 12:30 pm as usual.
That is not something I would class as idiomatic English.
Seems OK to me. As with many such things, it needs to be set up within a proper context*, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. (And CGEL says it’s absolutely OK. You want to pick a fight with Geoffrey Pullum? Think you’re grammarian enough? Do ya?)
I think the Big N may be right in thinking that there could be a US versus UK/Oz/NZ difference going on here, too.
* As I’ve mentioned before, I had the very good fortune with my Kusaal informants that a couple them had positively Hatter-level abilities for thinking up contexts in which a clause that seemed ungrammatical in isolation would turn out to be perfectly acceptable after all.
I could say it with a suitable pause:
“We’ve had our lunch — at 12:30 pm, as usual.”
But even that sounds out of the ordinary to me, as if you were starting to say one sentence then changed horses in midstream.
FWIW, I’m from England but have been in the US for many years now.
We agreed in the course of our previous exhaustive discussion of grammaticality that a major defect in typical Chomskyite discussions of the topic was their reliance on written specimens stripped of prosodic information like stresses and minor pauses. (All things very much associated in English with textual cohesion, as the Halliday mob call it: context, in other words.)
To go back to “I have been saying this for years”: have-constructions can encode perfects: past action affecting the present. They can also, as in this example, be purely aspectual, encoding a durative stretching up to the present.
(I haven’t checked the above in CGEL. I don’t want to spend 30 minutes of concentrated reading on finding out, inevitably, that I’m full of it.)
@ DE `I had the very good fortune with my Kusaal informants that a couple them had positively Hatter-level abilities for thinking up contexts in which a clause that seemed ungrammatical in isolation would turn out to be perfectly acceptable after all…’
I’m somehow seriously uninterested in recent advances in chatbot technology, but it occurred to me that they seem to be willing to offer opinions about things sometimes, and I wonder how good they might be at providing opinions about grammaticality of prompts, or maybe contexts for them. I think we should be told…
“Sure, we’ve had our lunch at 12:30 pm as usual.”
The Big J[*] here says that doesn’t fly with him: it is not Americromulent without an anacoluthic dash.
[*] “I am large; I contain multitudes.”
I find
and
equally awkward. Including the adverb doesn’t improve the phrasing any for me. Of course, neither of them is really terrible either. According to a scalar measure of grammaticality, they are pretty close to the grammatical end.
“I have been saying this for years”
encoding a durative stretching up to the present.
Yes, just like
“I’ve been cooking all morning”
As best I can glean from CGEL, the perfect non-progressive
is already continuative, i.e. it describes an extended period that includes now and is continuing. The continuative reading is cued by the for phrase, for years; without that, it would *not* include now. Also, it can have continuative adjuncts like ever since:
In that case, what’s added by the progressive? It emphasizes duration, and this remark in CGEL’s section 3.8.1(d) may be relevant: “Serial states. With situations of this kind the feature of duration tends to be accompanied by an emotive overtone, usually of disapproval, when emphasised by such adjuncts as always, continually, …”, with example: “He’s always losing his temper”. OK, for years isn’t always, but it’s heading in that direction: Somebody just said this but I’ve been saying it for years, haven’t you understood yet? Wasn’t anybody listening? Why don’t I get the credit, instead of Famous Person? etc.
(Caveat: the remark is about present progressive, not perfect progressive. CGEL describes perfect and progressive each in detail, but leaves the combination as an exercise for the reader, unless I’ve missed something. So I’m attempting the exercise.)
“I’ve been saying this for years”
Past continuous/progressive-imperfective with current relevance.
“I’ve said this for years.”
Past habitual-imperfective with current relevance.
“I’ve said this once already.”
Past perfective with current relevance.
All three examples are perfects but only one is perfective.
English always conflates perfective and habitual-imperfective formally: the distinction is only apparent from the wider context.
As I said, in English the progressive/not-progressive distinction and the perfect/not-perfect distinctions are orthogonal: all four combinations occur.
(Contrast, e.g. Latin, in which the perfect sense must also be perfective.)
John Cowan and Brett:
Yet such constructions are common enough, out there in the wild and in print no less:
• “We have looked through it yesterday, …”
• “We have discussed it yesterday at some length and I talked with his family last night.”
• “The world is plunged in the inky darkness that comes right before dawn, and the moon has set hours ago.”
• “Sorry to bother you, sir, but your man has escaped six hours ago.”
• (A miscellany.)
Your ideolects may differ. Are the texts above ungrammatical, or what? No more ungrammatical (if that term is to mean anything useful) than “to me who am” (here also), alien though it be to your own speech.
DE: What I’m trying to get at is precisely how “I’ve been saying this for years” is different from “I’ve said this for years”, considering that both can refer to exactly the same events. Both are continuative, i.e. include now and potentially the future. Both are dynamic (“say” is an action) and describe serial situations (repeated separate incidents). The difference between the two, as best I can tell so far, is in emphasis: the progressive form emphasizes the duration and the current activeness. Is that better?
In addition, CGEL stresses that progressive vs. non-progressive form doesn’t generally correspond to non-habitual vs. habitual meaning, since the progressive can also have habitual meaning:
I’ve been mowing the lawn for an hour. That’s why there’s grass all over me. (progressive/continuous)
I’ve been mowing the lawn for ten years. It’s my responsibility. (habitual)
His daughter has been mowing his lawn while he’s laid up. (habitual)
“I’ve been saying this for years” and “I’ve said this for years” differ in exactly the same way as “I was saying this for years” differs from “I said this for years”, and “I’m always saying this” differs from “I always say this.” It’s all progressive-imperfective versus habitual-imperfective.* The fact that the first two are also “perfect” is irrelevant to this question.
As always with aspectual differences cross-linguistically, the difference is in the way the events/states are conceptualised, rather than in the events/states themselves, and exactly the same state of affairs might be expressed by different aspects depending on the context. You could perfectly well say “I’m always saying this” to describe a habit; I think what’s going on here is that the inclusion of a specific time expression effectively neutralises the formal habitual/progressive difference. The progressive form of English mostly expresses a continuous sense, but can also express a time-limited habit (or even state): “People are dying during this war.” This tends only to be felicitous if there is actually an explicit time expression present.
“His daughter has been mowing his lawn while he’s laid up.” is a bit easier come up with a concrete explanation for, I think: the “progressive” is used in the context of comparing the scheduling of two sets of events, as in “I was talking when she came in.”
* Aspect is much more complicated than this in general, but for my current purpose it suffices to divide imperfective into just two, habitual versus progressive, and to say that English always uses the same form for perfective aspect as habitual-imperfective. Historically, of course, what’s happened is that English went from a verb system like German that does not grammaticalise the perfective/imperfective distinction in verb flexion at all, to spinning off just the progressive type of imperfective as a separate form. (Welsh has done it differently: the analogous construction is straightforwardly imperfective, and expresses habitual as well as progressive. McWhorter’s notion about the English form being based on a Brythonic substrate, apart from being altogether impossible to square with actual history, ignores this difference too.)
English grammars often call the perfect an “aspect” too, which strikes me as needlessly confusing, to say the least. It’s already bad enough that the terms “perfect” and “perfective” both exist, with quite different meanings, without making things even more confusing like that. I think I’d classify it under “tense.”
Kusaal (you knew that was coming) shows parallels to this secondary “time-limited habit/state” sense of the English progressive.
Most Kusaal verbs inflect for perfective versus imperfective; a minor conjugation of imperfective-only verbs includes a subset of verbs that have predicative adjectival meanings, like zulim “be deep.”
Kusaal dynamic-verb imperfective forms may have habitual or continuous meaning: in the latter sense, the verb is immediately followed by the particle nɛ, except in clauses where the particle is not permitted (most kinds of subordinate clause, along with content questions.) So
Nidib dit.
“People eat.”
Ninsieba dit nɛ.
“Some people are eating.”
To make life difficult for foreign learners, this particle nɛ also has a quite different use, as a constituent focus particle, focusing a following NP it there is one, and the verb word itself if not:
M da’ lɔr.
“I’ve bought a car.”
M da’ nɛ lɔr.
“I’ve bought a car.” (Not a bicycle; or just in reply to “What have you bought?”)
In ambiguous cases, the aspectual meaning trumps the focus meaning:
Ba dit nɛ sa’ab.
“They’re eating porridge.”
But this is only possible (after imperfective forms) if the continuous-progressive aspectual sense is possible. So
Mu’ar la zulim.
“The lake is deep.”
but
Mu’ar la zulim nɛ.
“The lake is deep.” (Not, as you were trying to tell me just now, shallow: constituent focus.)
However, you can use nɛ aspectually with zulim, but only if there is an explicit time expression present (though this can be as little as a tense-marking particle):
Nannanna, mu’ar la zulim nɛ.
“Now, the lake is deep.” (Before this, it was dried up.)
They might – obviously I’m just guessing – be hiding pauses:
“Your man has escaped – six hours ago.”
If people always planned their sentences before beginning to utter them, we might have gotten instead:
“Your man has escaped. He escaped a whole six hours ago, in fact, so [whatever emotional consequences].”
From a German point of view it’s obviously two aspects (that have little if anything in common with each other). This is because of the stark contrast to the German situation, where the same analytic “perfect” and synthetic “preterite” exist but don’t differ in meaning; only their very existence and a few relicts in the stylistics of their usage hint that they must have been used more like in English at some point.
To my mind “I’ve said this for years” more strongly brings to mind the (illogical in this case, but possible) meaning of having been talking non stop for years than does “I’ve been saying this for years”. (When reading those examples in previous comments.)
Thinking about an example where it really is continuous (in the non-grammatical sense): “I’ve lived here for years”. “I’ve been living here for years”. (As a statement of residence, it describes something uninterrupted). The latter, with “been living”, has (for me at least) more of a sense of there’s more to the statement (said or unsaid).
I’ve felt bad lately = all the time?
I’ve been feeling bad lately = intermittently?
Not really sure about this.
I’d say that the implicatures would be the opposite of that, broadly speaking …
However, these examples introduce a further complication, which I haven’t mentioned so far: English stative verbs* do not generally form progressives, and even in the non-perfect present “I feel bad” would usually be preferred to “I’m feeling bad.” The latter would usually imply a temporary state, and would often turn up with a time adjunct: “I’m feeling bad right now.”
Even if “feel” in this sense is not so clearly stative for you as it is in my own idiolect, notice that “I feel bad”, out of the blue, is not usually taken as habitual, unlike e.g. “I play chess”, which has to be taken as habitual. Because English also uses the “simple present” as habitual**, it can be habitual in an appropriate context: “I feel bad whenever I play chess.”
* This is a bit of an oversimplifcation, inasmuch as, although many verbs are characteristically used statively, stativity is a semantic thing, and many such verbs can also be used dynamically, sometimes with subtly different senses. (“I’m feeling a crawling sensation on the back of my neck.”)
** The English “simple present” of dynamic verbs, when not used as habitual, is essentially perfective aspect: this appears in its use in performatives and in things like stage directions and football commentary (“He shoots! He scores! The crowd goes wild!”) With stative verbs, it’s stative: “I love Lucy.” In a lot of languages, especially in West Africa, forms like this are actually formally the same as the perfective too.
I’m going down the road feeling bad….
Not many people are aware of Woody Guthrie’s I’m going down the road playing chess, an important work in forming a fully rounded picture of his oeuvre.
I’m glad you associate that song with Woody. Most people these days are more likely to think of The Grateful Dead. Apparently, the earliest known recording is by Henry Whitter.
Guthrie’s repertoire was actually extremely broad. Besides having written a surprising* number of songs about hydroelectric power, he performed pretty much every American folk form. Here’s something seasonal** he recorded.
* Well, it’s surprising if you don’t know the history of his work for the Bonneville Power Administration.
** I’m guessing this was written when Woody was part of a practicing Jewish household, through his marriage to Marjorie Mazia, one of Martha Graham’s principal dancers and Arlo’s mother.
Eight candles we’ll burn and a Ninth one too
Every New Year that comes and goes
We’ll think of the many in the hands of the few
And thank God we are seeds of the Jews.
David M:
They might – obviously I’m just guessing – be hiding pauses:
“Your man has escaped – six hours ago.”
But what an inspired guess. An epicycle: exactly what’s called for in such straits. Elegant, theory-preserving, and above all durable.
There is of course the abstract possibility that English really does describe ellipses (our apologists acknowledge that as a convenience in calculation) and not circles, but this can be dismissed with barely a thought.
Pure reason dictates an invisible and inaudible dash or pause, to save Holy Writ (II Huddlestone 5:13). We have no need to look through your new-fangled “telescope”. But the fool hath said in his heart: “There is no deus ex machina. Normally a simple past is all that’s required when a definite past time is in play, and the perfect (longer to utter and to receive) is not needed; still, it is grammatical, available, and indeed used with a definite time when circumstances make this convenient and economical. Why not?”
We might usefully and wisely persist in folly, of course.
You’re still not telling me if anyone actually talks like that, and it seems the option to tell me hasn’t crossed your mind.
David M:
Talks like what? Like the fool? Or do you mean talks with expressions like “Your man has escaped six hours ago” or “We have looked through it yesterday”? If the latter, then these are examples found in print and linked above, and I have heard and uttered countless such expressions myself – as a native long-time broker of nuanced English.
If you mean like the fool in my preceding post, then I may need to explain (for the younger Hatters). At Psalm 14:1 we find “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God” (KJV). This is often hailed as a knock-down refutation of atheism, straight from the Word of God. I took it that such an appeal was so obviously vapid that it could serve as a template for introducing wise rumination about how the perfect functions in actual day-to-day English.
“If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise,” Blake admonishes us. I recommend perpension concerning what the persistent fool has to say:
“There is no deus ex machina. Normally a simple past is all that’s required when a definite past time is in play, and the perfect (longer to utter and to receive) is not needed; still, it is grammatical, available, and indeed used with a definite time when circumstances make this convenient and economical. Why not?”
Any questions, class?
So: no pause, then?
Normally a simple past is all that’s required when a definite past time is in play, and the perfect (longer to utter and to receive) is not needed; still, it is grammatical, available, and indeed used with a definite time when circumstances make this convenient and economical. Why not?
CGEL p143:
David M:
A pause (or even a dash) may be inserted. But none is required, to justify or to make easy sense of “Your man has escaped six hours ago.” Not even an occult epicyclic one (invisible, inaudible). Pace Huddlestone, it seems. More about him soon, as a prelude to which:
CGEL pp. 144–5:
Past time adjuncts in experiential perfects
This use of the present perfect allows for the inclusion, under restrictive conditions, of
a past time adjunct:
[13] i a. He has got up at five o’clock. b. He got up at five o’clock.
ii a. We’ve already discussed it yesterday. b. We discussed it yesterday.
In [ia] “at five o’clock” is a crucial part of the potentially recurrent situation: the issue
is that of his getting up at this early hour; there is no reference to any specific occasion,
as there is in the simple preterite [ib]. In [iia] the already indicates that I’m concerned
with the occurrence of the situation of our discussing it within a time-span up to now
and cancels the normally excluding effect of yesterday evident in [iib].
Compare Who has written this note?, which might be said in a context where the note has just been discovered, with the focus on its present existence.
I dunno. That sounds odd to me. I would just say “who wrote this note?” even if I had found it this very instant.
I could say “Who has written this note?” if I were a teacher asking pupils to write a note conveying a requested meaning, in the same way I could say “Who has finished their homework?”
YMMV, as we elderly folks say today (the kids say something different, I’m sure)
Now this:
CGEL p. 146:
Adjuncts of recency
As illustrated in [15 iii], the present perfect admits the adjuncts recently and just, which of course signal a perfect of recent past (when they are used deictically, in contrast to the non-deictic use in She had recently/just been to Paris). But recency as such is not sufficient to sanction a time adjunct: *I have seen him a minute ago is no better than *I have seen him a year ago. Recently and just do not refer to definite times in the past, but indicate an indefinite time within a short interval stretching back from their To (which in their deictic use is identified as Td). They are comparable, therefore, to expressions like within the last few years, where recency is not an issue, but which combine quite freely with the present perfect.36
36. There are some relatively small-scale differences between AmE and BrE with respect to the choice between the present perfect and the simple preterite – cases where AmE may prefer a simple preterite where BrE prefers or requires a present perfect. One case concerns situations in the recent past, where I just saw them, for example, might be preferred in AmE, I’ve just seen them in BrE. Another case concerns the aspectual adjuncts already and yet: for discussion, see Ch. 8, §8.
The following, from the excerpt above, is a remarkable piece of prescriptivism masquerading as a finding in the hallowed domain of grammar (qualifying therefore as a species of what I call cryptoprescriptivism):
“But recency as such is not sufficient to sanction a time adjunct: *I have seen him a minute ago is no better than *I have seen him a year ago.”
People do say such things, with good motivation and in suitable contexts. Is the ruling against them to be found in Deuteronomy or Leviticus? Neither. It’s at II Huddlestone 5:13.
You should really write your own comprehensive descriptive grammar of English, Noetica, so that your insights might be more widely shared. Those amateurs behind CGEL are not in your league (quite apart from being secret prescriptivists and misleading us gullible groundlings about their bona fides.)
Don’t tempt me, big DE. The Authors of Holy Writ do indeed stand in need of occasional correction, as I’m sure you are aware. But I understand their situation. Just as in Hodder & Stoughton’s admirable Teach Yourself Kusaal (1953) a pedagogical norm is deployed (a smoothed version of the grammar suited to nudging neophytes tentatively forward) so mutatis mutanda selecta in pamphlets like CGEL. The notion that there is a standard correct grammar of English, frayable at its edges with judiciously chosen scholarly caveats, is perhaps a necessary fiction. I understand Huddleston saying what he says, and in extremis I might do similarly. But I try fairly and accurately to call out prescriptivism when I see it.
The part of CGEL that I am seriously inclined to supersede is the chapter on punctuation. That is also the only part I am remotely qualified to dream of tackling (unlike your eminent self). It’s an excellent start, but it lacks a completely rigorous ontologically layered approach – and a more international reach to take account of neglected subtleties and a broader range of variation in usage.
DE on non-progressive vs. progressive at 8:58 am:
*That* is what I was asking for, thanks. I’m not sure if CGEL makes specifically this point (maybe I missed it), but they’re careful to describe aspectuality in terms of how something is thought of by the speaker, rather than what happened in some non-subjective sense: their criteria for progressive aspectuality include “The situation is viewed imperfectively”, “The situation is presented as durative”, etc.
Neutralises, yes, that seems right (note we’re talking about expressions of *duration* only, not “at 7:00 pm”). The corpus of languagehat posts illustrates how “have been saying” typically goes with expressions of time intervals:
(The last illustrates the perfect of recent past: the time interval ended very recently and has a direct effect on now.) “Have said” much more often goes with other qualifiers, especially before, or *numbers* of times. But it *can* go with time intervals:
I don’t perceive a big difference in these vs. “I’ve been saying”, maybe a subtle difference in emphasizing who or what vs. how long or how often or how habitually. That’s why “neutralises” sounds good. I think all of them describe habitual *acts*, in a continuous *situation* of being someone who characteristically says such a thing (like the ongoing situation of his daughter mowing his lawn) — thus I’m not satisfied with your classification of them at 8:37 am as different aspectivities.
With the perfect progressive the duration doesn’t even have to be limited, it just has to be a duration; CGEL mentions “This has been going on since the beginning of time”, and indeed “has been going on forever” is a common phrase: things that “have been going on forever” (or seem like it) include inequality, police violence, marriage problems, Elton John’s farewell tour, this summer, winter, the senseless slaughter of innocents, spying, etc. A lot of things “have gone on forever”, too, and I think the distinction between that and “have been going on forever” is also neutralized.
Still on David Eddyshaw, December 19, 2022 at 8:58 am:
Well, but the relations between the two sets of events are not analogous: “She’s been mowing his lawn” is a sub-interval within the larger situation of “he’s laid up”, whereas “I was talking” is the larger situation within which “she came in” at a point in time. Also “She’s been mowing his lawn” regularly but not 24/7, whereas “I was talking” continuously. Her mowing his lawn is (as you said above) a time-limited habit/state.
Real-life examples of time-delimited habitual lawn-mowing:
Like the man said: All grammars leak.
(Sapir, famous for his prescriptivism, was of course commanding that this should be the case. There has been much misunderstanding of this point.)
Thank you. That’s what I wanted to know.
Thanks also for the quote from CGEL pp. 144–5; that makes sense of it (though it’s also slightly horrifying for me as a learner, describing as it does an exception from an exception from an already tricky rule).
David M:
All good. Sorry if I seemed unready to answer; I always value your advice and seek to reciprocate, but I genuinely couldn’t tell precisely what you wanted from me.
The CGEL rulings on this point are indeed uncomfortable to navigate. I have expressed my reservations.
Don’t worry, I was rather too tired to express myself clearly.
The perfect is used as a default by Australian and UK police in their reports, very often with an indication of definite time. Excerpts from a web search:
I have often noticed police starting an oral media report in the simple past, then switching to relentless use of the perfect. Why do they do persist in this? It was also a feature of assignments I had to assess (in the late Jurassic), for students in a policing course that we philosophers had taken custody of.
Should I have told those students it was ungrammatical (in the dense two-sided A4 sheet of general advice I gratuitously prepared for them about language, to the unmixed astonishment of police teaching staff)? I think not! Just unnecessary and infelicitous, given that nothing was gained by substituting it for the easier simple past. On the other hand, such a substitution is often felicitous and commendable: where the perfect is warranted for present relevance (or whatever) and definite time information is also available and informationally valuable.
“Then” in these examples seems consistently to translate the original Kusaal naan “subsequently, next”, rather than sankan la “at that time.” Not an indication of definite time at all.
These passages are evidently somewhat overliteral renderings of normal Kusaal narrative style, which describes events in order using series of un-tense-marked perfectives, following an initial scene-setting tense-marked form (here rendered, reasonably enough, by the English “simple past.”)
Ah yes, I should have excluded excerpts so heavily influenced by Kusaal usage. These will be safer (in present company):
Mmm? Excerpt 7 interestingly switches to simple past with “was unsuccessful”, presumably because “has been unsuccessful” would have been hyperbolically weird. Apparently derailed by that simple past, the sentence then continues with “left” rather than the otherwise-expected “has left”.
My guess is, policese prose is intentionally stiff. Like using “shall” in legalese.
A worthy thought Y, but exactly what is “intentionally stiff” about the perfect?
One idea: anything longer or more complex than necessary will sound formal, weighty, and “official”. The perfect is of course measurably longer and more compounded than the (simple) past. I see similar straining after formality in much academic text that I edit (see this early mediaeval comment of mine). Many writers literally never use “so” (too natural and easy to understand) or “but” (anywhere in a sentence, let alone the start). I often recast to remove former and latter where these do nothing but tax the reader’s patience; and I strike out extra words in sentences like this:
I might offer this replacement:
As a playful stylistic choice I cultivate a virtuosically complex manner here though, don’t I?
(DE: Admit it. It’s endearing.)
@Y:
They do indeed seem to be in a peculiar police dialect. It’s hard to imagine a normal civilian actually saying anything like that, or indeed, a policeman saying anything like that except in police-reportese.
Presumably the exact time references are part of the standard police-report format. The present perfect, as opposed to simple past, is, I imagine, in honour of the fact that the police are still investigating on our behalf. This is an artificial language. Police Sanskrit. And, as such, we cryptoprescriptivists may not condemn it*, though we are at liberty to avoid it ourselves. (Unless, presumably, we are in the police.)
Similarly, we may not suggest that there is anything non-standard about the syntax of newspaper headlines. Newspaper-headline writers, like ourselves, are God’s children. Mad axeman slays four.
* In fact, enterprising postgraduates will be able to get PhDs out of describing this dialect. “The Language of English Police Reports and associated Press Releases.” (I strongly suspect that this has actually already been done: many such things appear in the list of new publications on Linguist List every month.** Indeed, there may be an actual academic discipline of Poilce Report Studies.)
** I’m not exaggerating. Have a look.
Newspaper-headline writers, like ourselves, are God’s children. Mad axeman slays four.
And, as referenced in these pages not long ago, A Great City’s People Forced To Drink Swill.
Police Motu.
Artificial features show up in police reports in other languages, too. Police reports in German consistently refer to people by all-caps last name + article.
David E:
It’s hard to imagine a normal civilian actually saying anything like that, or indeed, a policeman saying anything like that except in police-reportese.
Australian police default use of the perfect spills into more general domains of discourse, as when journalists and the like relate a story thought to have sensitive legal implications. They might also pepper the narrative with “alleged” (when the matter is already determined) and “after” (when actual causation is in no way disputed). I’m reminded of some speakers’ insistence on calling people individuals, when there is not the slightest risk of confusing them with organisations. (Mostly US, that one; but increasingly heard here in Australia.)
None of this police diversion detracts from the central point I make about the perfect. I have shown that people do use it with a definite time indication, in print. And I can report that they, and I, do it de vive voix also: when there is something to be gained, stylistically or informationally. Calling this “ungrammatical” outside some some tightly limited circumstances is unwarranted. It would take rigorous argument, and so far no one has given that. Some pronouncements in a treatise on grammar are often prescriptivist, and the authors need to get out more. (Certainly more than you or I do, DE.)
The present perfect, as opposed to simple past, is, I imagine, in honour of the fact that the police are still investigating on our behalf.
O, and accounting for any of this will, in the end, take something more than an apologist’s imaginings.
(Example of insistence on calling persons inviduals: here.)
None of this police diversion detracts from the central point I make about the perfect.
Your “central point” appears to be that all attempts to say anything meaningful at all about the grammatical status of the perfect are meaningless, as you have determined that the issue is purely stylistic.
You will just have to be content with pitying those of us (like the simpleton Huddleston) who are sadly unable to grasp your point, or perhaps unwilling to do so for ideological reasons. My feeling is that we are more to be pitied than censured. (Some of us cannot even pronounce “Ulysses” correctly. I blame the teachers.)
David E:
Your “central point” appears to be that all attempts to say anything meaningful at all about the grammatical status of the perfect are meaningless, as you have determined that the issue is purely stylistic.
Your rhetorical use of scare quotes (if that’s what they are) is noted; but they too demonstrate nothing.
If that’s how things appear to you then you may need to read more attentively. I impugned just one claim in Huddleston’s chapter, and I argued with evidence and personal testimony that on this single matter he was asserting something eminently disputable. That’s one of the things we do here, right?
I have already praised CGEL, and mentioned that I consult it often. I give it a critical reading, as we all might.
accounting for any of this will, in the end, take something more than an apologist’s imaginings
As my attempts at “rigorous argument” are categorised by you as “an apologist’s imaginings”, there seems little to be gained from troubling you with them any further.
(Quote quotes …)
(I still like your hat with the tassel, though.)
@David Eddyshaw:
A quick search finds Ćetković, Sanja (2017) The Language of Police Reports: A Quest for Precision or a Bureaucratic Exercise of Language Degradation? Círculo de Lingüística Aplicada a la Comunicación 71, 159–176, doi:10.5209/CLAC.57308.
Alas, Ćetković’s interest there is mostly in pronominal and nominalisation strategies rather than tense/aspect, and I do not have enough Montenegrin to look into her doctoral work on Policijski diskurs iz ugla forenzičke lingvistike.
Yes, there’s quite an industry of describing special-purpose English dialects. Some of it has evident practical applications, especially when it comes to things like law enforcement and courts. The easy bit is obviously special vocabulary, which is largely what people have in mind when thinking about argots, professional jargons and so forth. But syntactic peculiarities are more interesting. (A sadly familiar one is the medical-bedside-manner patronising “we” for “you.”)
Interesting paper!
The paper also makes the point that part of the distinctive poilice-report style is deliberately modelled on legalese.
Following features of police diction in Shakespeare:
1. use of perfect
2. using “moreover” or other connective when repeating same point in different words
3. Confusion of adverb and adjective (also mixing primary/secondary with first/second) in enumeration
—
Don Pedro. Officers, what offence have these men done?
Dogberry. Marry, sir, they have committed false report;
moreover, they have spoken untruths; secondarily,
they are slanders; sixth and lastly, they have
belied a lady; thirdly, they have verified unjust
things; and, to conclude, they are lying knaves.
…
Dogberry. Come, bring away the plaintiffs: by this time our sexton hath reformed Signior Leonato of the matter: and, masters, do not forget to specify, when time
and place shall serve, that I am an ass.
—
Much Ado about Nothing, V.1
We are evidently dealing with a tradition.
Dogberry is speaking Old Police Sanskrit. There is a potential for a diachronic study here!
Excellent and cunning plan. Please proceed, subject to Committee approval. Tell them we’ll draw on the best of Pāṇini but supplement his insights with those of Grīssiṇi – not forgetting the weak coffee connection afforded by Donuttus.
The police narrative perfect may be related to the urban pub anecdote perfect, also used in sports broadcasting by soccer pundits recapping a passage of play.
Is Dogberry funny? I have to admit that he has always seemed to me the least funny (but one*) of Will Kempe’s Shakespearean roles. Whether in the stage productions I’ve seen, or on film played by the normally brilliant Michael Keaton, he always seems to disappoint. (In the film, BRIAN BLESSED is, in my view, much funnier, although his role is much less over the top.)
* The least funny is Peter from “Romeo and Juliet,” a part which seemingly only exists because Kempe, as one of the co-owners of the company, received a part in every play.
Is Dogberry funny?
The Tale of Goji, a Sino-Japanese adaptation, gets little attention. The plot involves a humorous typo.
I think Dogberry is very funny (including Keaton’s Dogberry).
Mollymooly commented in December 2022, concerning the policese or police reportese that prompted discussion after I raised it earlier in the thread:
The police narrative perfect may be related to the urban pub anecdote perfect, also used in sports broadcasting by soccer pundits recapping a passage of play.
Yes indeed. And just now I discover “The strange phenomenon of the footballer’s perfect“, a 2008 paper by Jim Walker. Among his examples:
Worth a read; and worth recording at the Hattery, I thought.
Interesting stuff:
Thanks for finding and sharing it!
Wrong.
In Ireland the present is standard.
The question “How long are you here?” may mean “how long have you been here?” or “how long more will you be here?” or “how long in total will you have been here by the time you leave?”
“How long are you waiting?” can only mean “How long have you been waiting?”
following @mollymooly’s line of thinking, i wonder if the footballer’s perfect is just the migration of the game-commentator’s present-tense narrative into the post-game interview. despite walker’s apparent desire to find an explanation that’s as language-internal (in relation, it seems to me, a chomskyesque isolated-system model) as possible, rather than a socially-centered one, that feels like one of the more parsimonious explanations. it would also put the footballers’ perfect in line with another television tense, the reality-show present, which is on display whenever after-the-fact interview audio (or video) interviews are overlaid onto or intercut with diagetic footage, and so (presumably on producers’ orders) are conducted in a similar (often perfect) tense. Forged In Fire, for instance, often cuts between footage of commentators and contestants, with the tense of narration pretty much constant despite the (quite evident) difference in when the two streams were recorded.
+ 1
@David Marjanović (and anyone else able to answer):
You write, “in German “want” must be accompanied by a wish, “must” by an obligation, “can” by an ability, “be supposed to” by something you’re supposed to do – but these need not be expressed as verbs. Ich will nach Irland, ich muss nach England, ich muss zu Lorenzo, ich soll nach Parthien and, while I’m at it, ich kann Englisch – entirely unremarkable.”
Is omission of the second verb possible with da, hier, or zu Hause, as in “ich will da ~ hier ~ zu Hause?”
Are the omitted verbs always verbs of motion? Could bleiben, sein, and sitzen be omitted?
It’s not possible with “I want to be at home”, but that’s not what you really say; you say “I want to go home”, and there ich will nach Hause (or ich will heim) without any explicit “go” is perfectly standard.
But yes, with wollen, sollen, müssen only verbs of motion can be omitted if I’m not overlooking something major. Unless you want to have something, in which case the full verb is usually omitted in English as well (I want a book = I want to have/get/buy/… a book).
But yes, with wollen, sollen, müssen only verbs of motion can be omitted if I’m not overlooking something major.
Ich muß gar nichts!
Was soll das?!
Was willst du denn?!
Compare “I want out”. (Anyone saying that here in Ozland would sound distinctly US-influenced.)
Danish normally uses a plain deictic pronoun with kan, vil and må, and probably others I can’t remember just now, omitting the pro-verb gøre which comes over a bit stilted in these constructions:
— Kan du ikke hente den grønne stol og mit store sjal til mig? — Det kan jeg [gøre]! — Gør du det ikke med det samme, så?
Compare “I want out”. (Anyone saying that here in Ozland would sound distinctly US-influenced.)
Whereas want-away brings us back to British soccer
Thanks, I wasn’t familiar with that expression and it’s a good one.
Is omission of the second verb possible with da, hier, or zu Hause, as in “ich will da ~ hier ~ zu Hause?”
To add to what DM said, will in these constructions implies a direction, so you need to use the directional forms of those adverbs (hierhin, dahin, nach Hause).
Ich muß gar nichts!
Was soll das?!
Was willst du denn?!
Stu is right to mention these constructions. They are examples of the general rule that a neuter pronoun can stand in for a clause (which is also true for English this /that/ it / what.
@hans
It seems to me, that sometimes the neuter pronoun itself is missing
Ich will/muss/soll [das] unbedingt [tun/machen].
Except of bare ich muss (which means “I have to go to the toilet”) I can only imagine that in cases where the context makes it clear what the person wants to do / must do (I.e., when it has been mentioned before or the constructions you mention are a response). This is different from the shortenings we mentioned before, which work without such context.
Heh… I overlooked something major: what Hans said. It was late, the weather has been extremely tiring…
Better version: Müssen tut man aufs Klo. (“You ‘have to’ go to the toilet; everything else is really optional – including death and taxes.”)
Müssen tut man aufs Klo. (“You ‘have to’ go to the toilet; everything else is really optional – including death and taxes.”)
As resources for concision and profundity, German and Latin are peers. That colloquial saying hits as hard as anything Horace came up with.
You have to study Classical Latin for decades to get anything out of it, and can’t do much else in that time. You can speak German for decades and get something out of it, while holding down a nine to five.
I have little time left in this life for concision and profundity in languages other than German and English. I expect speakers of the others to state their business and get on with it, instead of waffling elegantly.