[Ads-l] Historical and literary present.

[Jonathan Lighter]

That's a relief!

But you must mean, "anti-linguistic prejudice."

Exx.:

I

1864 Albert B. Harkness _A Latin Grammar for Schools and Colleges_ (N.Y.:
D. Appleton) 215:  The historical present may sometimes be best rendered by
the English Imperfect, and sometimes by the English Present, as that has a
similar historical use.

1917 John Marcellus Steadman, Jr. _The Origin of the Historical Present in
English_  (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Studies in Philology
XIV, ): The historical present in English has received little careful
study. The statements made in the various historical grammars are general
and, at times, extremely vague.

II

1939 W. G. Johnson _Beginning Swedish_ (Rock Island. Ill.:  Augustana):
201: Memorize the following forms of the modals: Infinitive. Present.
Literary Present Plural. Past Literary Past Plural. Supine.

HathiTrust alleges the appearance iof "literary present" in George O.
Curme's _Syntax_ (1930) but won't let me see it.

JL


On Mon, Sep 28, 2020 at 8:38 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> Nope, and nothing for “free indirect style” either.  Clearly there’s
> anti-lit-critter prejudice at work here.
>
> > On Sep 28, 2020, at 8:23 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> wrote:
> >
> > Can it be that OED has no entry for either of these English verb tenses?
> >
> > Or have I lost some more brain cells today?
> >
> > (Right, false dichotomy. Just answer the question.)
> >
> > JL
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


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