Another monosyllabic base form for PSP
Victor Steinbok
aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM
Mon May 7 22:22:11 UTC 2012
Joel--I suppose, you made that observation because it is bothering you.
VS-)
On 5/7/2012 6:10 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> I don't understand why context is necessary. The sentence is ""You
> didn't come here because I bat my eyelashes at you." To me "didn't"
> is once in the past, and thus I take "bat" to be the simple past also
> (like "I sat (down)"). If I read Neal correctly immediately below,
> there was one initial encounter, and at their next meeting she says
> "didn't ... bat".
>
> I would say "didn't ... batted", however. Something like Bogart and
> Bacall in "To have and have not" ("You whistled?")
>
> If the example had been ""You don't come here because I bat my
> eyelashes at you", that is continuing action, and "bat" is the
> present tense. The same for "You aren't coming here because I bat my
> eyelashes at you."
>
> Joel
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