LL-L "Grammar" 2005.03.06 (04) [E]

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From: Ingmar Roerdinkholder <ingmar.roerdinkholder at WORLDONLINE.NL>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2005.03.05 (05) [E]

Roger wrote/has written that in Belgium East Brabant the simple past tense
is hardly used, and people normally use the present perfect for all past
tenses.
I know that in at least Afrikaans all past tense is formed with the
present perfect construction 'hê ge...+infinitive' ek het gedoen, hy het
geprobeer, ons het gekyk etc., which sound quite simple or even a bit
primitive in Dutch ears, that are used to: ik heb gedaan/ik deed, hij
heeft geprobeerd/hij probeerde, wij hebben gekeken/wij keken...
Lit. translated the Afrikaans examples would be:
I have do, he have try, us have look, for: I have done/I did, he (has)
tried, we (have) looked. But Afr. preserved a few simple past forms: was,
had, and maybe a few more I can't recall right now.

In Yiddish text I noticed a lot of: ikh hob gamokht, and  er hot gazogt,
too. Does it have simple past as well? Is there a difference with German?

Ingmar

Roger Hondshoven schreeft/heeft geschreven:

>I would like to add a note in connection with the use of this tense in the
>dialects I know (Flemish East-Babant). In the linguistic research I
carried
>out into these dialects it always struck me that the Simple Past Tense is
>relatively scantily used. There are a considerable number of  - mainly
>strong - verbs where the tense is systematically although unconsciously
>avoided by native speakers. For these verbs they automatically switch to
the
>Present Perfect. When I tried to find out what the correct verbal form was
>for the Simple Past, I was met by incomprehension. I tried to entice them
to
>use the Simple Past by saying things like: 'Suppose this happened
yesterday
>or last week, what would you say then?" To no avail. They stubbornly went
on
>using the Present Perfect. Or they found a way to avoid the problem
>altogether by resorting to the trick of paraphrasing the action, using a
>kind of continuous tense like "Ze waren aan 't + infinitive". It's clear
>that some Past Tense forms must sound very queer to them. When I insisted
>that they  - they were elderly people with only limited formal schooling -
>should use the Simple Past they were flabbergasted. Even those who knew
what
>I meant by "Onvoltooid Verleden Tijd" were unable to give a
straightforward
>answer or wavered. I concluded that there is an enormous amount of
>uncertainty as regards the Simple Past Tense.

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