Perfective-Imperfective - Habitual

[Patrick C. Ryan]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

----- Original Message -----
From: Larry Trask <larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 1999 10:49 AM

Dear Larry and IEists:

[LT complained]

> Well.  Let me defend my old friend Bernard against these disgraceful
> slurs.

> I've known Bernard for twenty years, and I can assure you all that he is
> indeed a native speaker of English, born and raised in England.

> But the much bigger slur is that Comrie is the sort of linguist who merely
> reports his own intuitions, without looking at the data.  Bernard is an
> enormously knowledgeable linguist.  He speaks Russian almost like a native,
> and he is fluent in a number of other languages.  He has made serious studies
> of a large number of languages, and he's done fieldwork in places ranging
> from Siberia to New Guinea.  And he *never* makes a statement he can't back
> up with plenty of hard data.

[PR responds]

Well, quite aside from what Comrie's modus operandi may or may not be, Larry
is certainly "the sort of linguist who merely reports his own intuitions,
without looking at the data" as his included "anecdotal proof" of the his
interpretation of the significance of the English phrase "used to VP"
confirms. Here is what he said:

[LT]

> Anyway, it is trivial to demonstrate that Comrie is right: English `used
> to' does *not* entail `no longer'.  An example.

> Several years ago I was teaching bridge to some of my friends here in
> Brighton.  One was Ian, and Ian had unusual trouble in mastering the
> bidding system, especially the no-trump bids.  More than a year ago, he
> left Brighton, and I haven't played bridge with him, or even seen him,
> since then.  Got it?

> Now, it is perfectly normal for me to say, when discussing the past,
> `Ian used to have trouble with no-trump bids'.  This emphatically does
> *not* imply `...but he doesn't now.'  Now does it?  For all I know, Ian
> is still struggling with no-trump bids, but I just don't have any
> information.

> This single example, I submit, is enough to prove that Comrie is right
> and that Ryan is wrong.  Nothing surprising here: we linguists learned
> years ago that naive native-speaker intuitions are untrustworthy, and
> that the facts can be determined only by careful examination of real
> usage.  And Comrie has carried out just such an examination of the `used
> to' construction.  End of story.

[PR]

"This single example, I submit, is enought to prove that Comrie is right and
that Ryan is wrong."

This "verdict" is highly revealing of the state of mind of its deliverer.

Evidently Larry feels that as a non-"naive native-speaker" his intuitions
are not "untrustworthy" whereas mine are. I see no careful examination of
real usage here. I see only an example of the way Larry uses and interprets
this phrase. And, if Comrie has actually "carried out just such an
examination", then his opinion has no more intrinsic worth than Larry's. And
I suspect that Comrie did, like Larry, shoot from the hip because, after
acknowledging that many would disagree, he cites no study of contemporary
English usage that would support his assertion that "used to VP" does *not*
imply discontinuity of the situation.

Now whatever may be the usage in Appalachia, if I wanted to describe my
experiences with Ian, based on 35+ years of *professional* experience with
English and residency throughout many sections of the US, I would say:

`Ian always had trouble with no-trump bids' if I wanted to make no further
implication as to Ian's current problems.

If I wanted to emphasize the continuity of the Ian's problems into a past or
present, I would respectively say:

`Ian had always had trouble with no-trump bids, . . .'

`Ian has always had trouble with no-trump bids'.

If I wanted to imply that Ian's troubles were past, only then would I say:

`Ian used to have trouble with no-trump bids'

because the implication is clearly, for *most* speakers of English, that 'Ian
no longer has trouble with no-trump bids'.

Now, Larry has also mentioned Spanish 'soler'.

I would be very curious to know from a native speaker of Spanish whether

Yo soli'a tomar el o'mnibus

implies to a native speaker that 'I' still take the bus.


It seems to me that, out of his own mouth, Larry has demonstrated that he is
doing exactly that which, out of the other side of his mouth, he explicitly
deplores.

Pat

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