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<div dir="ltr"><p style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">===========================================<br>
L O W L A N D S - L - 23 August 2008 - Volume 01<span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);"><br>
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<p><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"><br>
From: <span><span><span style="color: rgb(121, 6, 25);">Sandy Fleming</span></span></span><span> </span><span><<a href="mailto:sandy@scotstext.org" target="_blank">sandy@scotstext.org</a>></span><br>
Subject: <span>LL-L "Orthography" 2008.08.17 (04) [E]</span><br>
<br>
> From: <a href="mailto:heatherrendall@tiscali.co.uk" target="_blank">heatherrendall@tiscali.co.uk</a>
<<a href="mailto:heatherrendall@tiscali.co.uk" target="_blank">heatherrendall@tiscali.co.uk</a>><br>
> Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2008.08.17 (02) [E]<br>
></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">>
Agreed! But the fact that the examiners used 'misspelt/misspelled' as<br>
> a "spelling problem" points to the state of affairs that reigns
in<br>
> British Education - not enough people know not enough about an awful<br>
> lot.<br>
<br>
> I had a postgrad. student at Cambridge
tell me that 'learnt' was the<br>
> preterite and 'learned' was the past participle rather than possible<br>
> alternatives for both! She would not have believed that had she not<br>
> been taught it. She wouldn't have been taught it if her teacher had<br>
> been well schooled in grammar.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">I find the
description of English grammar for educational purposes a bit<br>
confused, or possibly I should say confusing, because I'm not sure if<br>
it's me that's approaching it wrongly or the educators.<br>
<br>
As I understand it a verbal participle is so called because it needs<br>
another verb (usually a stative verb, eg "have", "is") to
be used along<br>
with it. But this is just word taxonomy which, while useful for ensuring<br>
correct sentence structure, isn't a good way to approach verb formation.<br>
<br>
To me, a verb can take four kinds of modification:<br>
<br>
o tense: the time at which the action happens;<br>
o aspect: the way in which the action develops over
time;<br>
o mood: the speakers attitude to or opinion of the
action<br>
(including whether it even
ever happened);<br>
o manner: the way in which the action was executed.<br>
<br>
To me, tense is very simple: as far as markings go, it's either past,<br>
present or future (plus some languages have markings for things like<br>
"distant past" and "distant future"). Times can be specified
more<br>
accurately using extra words.<br>
<br>
This means that a term like "preterite" doesn't mean much to me: if
you<br>
say "future" then you should just say "past". Am I missing
something?<br>
<br>
So to me your postgrad is very confused: you can say "I learned", so,
at<br>
least in that context, it's _not_ a participle. When you say "I have<br>
learned", you're using the perfect(ive?) aspect in the past tense. When<br>
you say "I was learning", you're using the imperfect aspect in the
past<br>
tense.<br>
<br>
She might say that "learned" is a participle because you can say
"I have<br>
learned", but consider the verb "to take": you say "I
took" but "I have<br>
taken". In other words, -en is the perfect participle, but in a lot of<br>
English verbs (such as "learned"), -ed is used as the marker for both<br>
past tense and perfect participle, causing some difficulties for<br>
grammarians who don't think hard enough!<br>
<br>
So the preterite and perfect participle is the same for "learned"<br>
thought they're distinguished for some verbs such as "took/taken". Of<br>
course "learned" and "learnt" can be used interchangeably
so there's<br>
going to be no distinction between them in grammatical terms, we'd have<br>
to resort to phonology to classify them. The best you could say is that<br>
"learnt" has a more "final" feel to it than
"learned", so might be some<br>
sort of vestigial, nascent or assumed (by some speakers) "cessative"<br>
aspect or something.<br>
<br>
You'll notice that I think of -ing and -en (more usually -ed) as marking<br>
the continuous and perfect _aspects_ respectively, they're not about<br>
tense:<br>
<br>
I was speaking.<br>
I am speaking.<br>
I have spoken.<br>
I am spoken for (or more clearly "I am taken"!).<br>
<br>
You can use either particle in either of the two tenses in English:<br>
"-ing/-en" are _not_ tense markings but aspectual markings. So it
seems<br>
to me to be rubbish to talk about "present and past participles" in<br>
English.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"><br>
> What is a teacher not well schooled in grammar doing being a teacher<br>
> of languages??????</span></p>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">But think
about French teaching. The conditional mood is called the<br>
conditional tense. The imperfect and perfect aspects are called tenses.<br>
The subjunctive mood is sneakily called the "subjunctive". I think
that<br>
this is because in French (and other languages), the tenses, moods and<br>
aspects are all covered by one large semi-consistent system of<br>
inflections, so that grammarians and teachers try to describe them under<br>
an umbrella terminology, giving us students that are a bit vague about<br>
what's actually going on, who eventually turn into teachers of a similar<br>
water.<br>
<br>
It seems to me that it's not that they're not well schooled, it's that<br>
they're schooled in a tradition that includes some considerable<br>
nonsense. I imagine it has its roots in trying to base English grammar<br>
on Latin, but that doesn't make it right!<br>
<span style="color: rgb(136, 136, 136);"><br>
Sandy Fleming<br>
<a href="http://scotstext.org/" target="_blank">http://scotstext.org/</a><br>
</span><span style="color: black;"><br></span></span></div>
•
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