Talk:English grammar/Archive 1

Do "Spivak Pronouns" Merit Mention?
I'm concerned that this article gives too much credit to this Spivak character for the types of pronouns he's invented. They have been used in four books, according to his article, three of them written by him, all of which were of small circulation. No authority has accepted them and almost no one has heard of them. Why are they in this article? Even the mention of "Greeklish" in an article on the Greek Language seems legitimate compared to "Spivak Pronouns."

Question regarding the Flowchart
I might be wrong, but doesn't the present perfect tense describe something that occurs before the past/imperfect? If so, the flowchart should be revised/removed. --24.126.30.46 03:41, 30 October 2005 (UTC)


 * The present perfect tense is for something that, as of now, has been completed. The past perfect (imperfect in other languages) is for something that was ongoing at the time (in the past) being talked about.  The best way to think about it (imo) is to separate tense and aspect from each other.  (I won't be editing the article just now, I'm too tired to think.)  Neonumbers 11:03, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Shall vs. will
I'm uncertain about the accuracy of this article's distinction between the meanings of "shall" and "will". In American English, at least, "shall" is almost never used except as an affectation; "will" is the verb used in all cases to conjugate a verb into the future tense. There may be some difference between "shall" and "will" in other countries, although I'm uncertain of this as well, because even the author of this article seems to have used "will" to represent the future tense independent of intention, as in this quotation (emphasis mine):
 * Simple future: "I shall listen." (I will listen expresses intention, prediction, and other conditions, whereas shall simply expresses what will occur, irrespective of the speaker's intention.)

In any case, the note that "shall" is not part of common usage in American English should be added, but I'm not sure where in the article it should go. The part about shall/will is already riddled with parentheses.--AaronW 23:50, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

In the 1950s and 1960s, we were taught that "shall" is for the first person (I, we), while "will" is for second (you) and third (he, she, it, they). Other than that, there is no difference between them. I believe that this still holds. We were also taught that reversing that usage causes the verb to be emphatic. For example, "You shall do that." is more emphatic than "You will do that." This, I believe, is no longer used. Note, by the way, its usage in the 1611 King James Version of the Bible, in the Ten Commandments: "Thou shalt not". "Thou", of course, was simply second person singular. The "shalt" added emphasis. (T. F. Ewald, MA in linguistics, ESL and English instructor)


 * Check out what The King's English says about it at http://www.bartleby.com/116/213.html, but bear in mind that it refers to British English and dates from 1908. My feeling is that the reality in actual usage was never as cut-and-dried as this prescriptive article makes out, especially in the more complicated parts of the system, but I shall was undoubtedly the Standard English future in the past, even if in practice it was fighting I will. Spellbinder 12:19, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * We really need to go to modern references.


 * In US English usage, "shall" has long since dropped into obscurity. Check out Pyles and Algeo, 1993, The Origins and Development of the English Language or Bryan A Garner's The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style: "with only minor exceptions, will has become the universal word to express futurity ... the word (shall) is peripheral in AmE".


 * In UK usage, Oxford again, the Pocket Fowler's Modern English Usage: "The customary rule is that to express a simple future tense shall is used after I and we, and will in other cases - whereas to express intention or wish the reverse applies. But it is unlikely that this rule has ever had any consistent basis of authority in actual usage, and many examples of English in print disregard it ... Shall has been largely driven out by will in all parts of the English-speaking world other than England. It survives mostly in first-person questions or suggestions". Tearlach 23:26, 25 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I learned the same definition/distinction given by Fowler's quoted above, with the following set of quotes to clarify:


 * "I will drown; no one shall save me!" = a declaration of suicidal intent.
 * "I shall drown; no one will save me!" = a lament by a drowning person about the indifference of bystanders.


 * I have actually seen it used this way in older print sources, for what that's worth; of course, I agree that "shall" is not in common usage today in the U.S. (replaced by "should" for questions).


 * Vcrs 04:43, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Footnote #3
I edited this because: In British English, shall denotes simple futurity in the first person, and will denotes simple futurity in the second and third persons.

No, it doesn't - evidence has been provided that this is no longer generally believed, and probably never was, except by prescriptivists. So describing it as a prescriptivist rule isn't POV: whereas stating it as a general truth is.

In British English, adherence to the rule has declined in some places ...

It has declined generally.

although use of shall remains the norm for expressing the simple future in the first person.

See above. It remains in first person questions or suggestions. Something like "Shall I let the cat out?" is common, but you won't find many people saying "I shall let the cat out". Tearlach 17:45, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Contrast your example to equivalents for will. Specifically, "Will I let the cat out?" has a noticeably different meaning than "Shall I let the cat out?" to my (American) ears&mdash;the former asking for a prediction, the latter asking for advice. On the other hand, "I will let the cat out" and "I shall let the cat out" seem to me to mean the same thing, with the latter sounding more pretentious. So I would agree that there's still some kind of difference, anyway. &mdash;Simetrical (talk) 18:45, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

I wouldn't make a big thing of it in the article, because the usage of "shall" as the marked form for the second and third persons, and "will" for the first person, is receding in all varieties of English. I tend not to use "shall" nowadays, even in formal registers. There are far more important things to say about the grammar in a summary article. Tony 06:50, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Usage of "they"
English speakers will prefer the use of "they" (3rd. plural) when a person's gender is unknown or irrelevant to context -- they may prefer it but this is clearly incorrect as it will cause a number disagreement. Where does it say in this article that "he" is the correct pronoun? --Daniel C. Boyer


 * If the gender is unknown, the pronoun "one" is the appropriate pronoun to use. -- R'son-W


 * I'm not too sure that I agree with that, I don't often use the word "one" as a pronoun, save in formal writing, but when I do, I tend to use it as a singular pronoun in either the first or third person, or both. I don't recall having ever used it as a gender neutral third person singular. I think that perhaps there should be a paragraph on the word "one" in this context though. -- LupusCanis


 * there's also a number disagreement with the pronoun "you". It's not incorrect. -- Tarquin


 * But isn't "you" both singular and plural? Where does the number disagreement come in? -- Daniel C. Boyer


 * Well, technically, Daniel's right about "you". I believe Tarquin may be referring to the fact that historically, "you" was plural and "thou" was singular: "you are" and "thou art".  It's entirely possible that "he/she" and "they" are undergoing a similar sort of shift; it's too early to tell.  For more info, check out the singular they article.


 * Wikipedia is descriptivist, not prescriptivist. We should describe linguistic trends as they occur, rather than pass judgment on perceived errors. The singular "they" and generic "you" are extremely common and deserve mention. Binadot/talk


 * If you'll look at the opening paragraph of the article, you'll note that its intent is descriptive, not prescriptive. I also am inclined to disagree that it is "incorrect"; from a descriptivist point of view, correctness is defined by usage.  Certainly, from a prescriptivist point of view, using "they" instead of "he" or "she" is incorrect.  In fact, strictly speaking, the correct pronoun should be it; the fact that traditional prescriptivists prefer "he" and modern prescriptivists prefer "s/he" or "he or she" is also a demonstration of the occasional arbitrariness of prescriptivist rules.
 * Though, in the long run, good prescriptivists have clarity of writing as their goal. Their source data should be descriptive information about the language in question, with decisions of "rightness" based on what is the usage most in line with descriptive data that will produce the clearest written text, which lacks the sorts of contextual cues found in daily usage.  Or at least, so it would seem to me.
 * (The fact that 19th-century grammarians mistakenly thought that Latin was a good model for prescriptive rules of English grammar is an entirely different discussion. *grin*)  --  pgdudda

Fowler notes that "they" / "their" can be used in non-grammatical constructions, but that this arises because there is no suitable alternative ("his" to mean "his or hers", or unwieldy "his or hers" itself). "they" as a singular pronoun has been used by writers since the 16th C so we're in good company. :) Tarquin


 * Would it make sense, then, to separate out descriptive and prescriptive grammar? If some user is consulting this page for correct rules of written English, then such high-minded issues may be confusing.  The last thing that the English teachers and tutors of the world need are students citing descriptive rules as rules rather than usage tendencies.  Both types represent valuable knowledge, but this comingling is paying service to neither.--Smallwhitelight 19:50, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * Getting back to the original subject, a good argument can be made that "they" is not just a third person plural pronoun, but also a third person singular gender-unknown pronoun. It wouldn't be the only such word to serve two different but similar purposes in the English language.  If you accept this, then the use of it in sentences such as "I asked for the manager, but I don't think they will help me" is fine, so it is correct for both descriptive and prescriptive grammars.  If a little controversial. this site has a list of historical uses of the form, focusing on the work of Jane Austen, but also including many others, including the King James Authorised Bible, and Shakespeare. JulesH 21:20, 9 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Equally, one could argue that "he" is not just a third person singular masculine pronoun, but a third peron gender-indeterminate pronoun, similar to the French "ils", used both for refering to groups of males and mixed groups. 80.255 13:17, 26 August 2005 (UTC)


 * The new 2002 edition of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language strongly supports the long-standing validity of singular "they". . Tearlach 23:29, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, and so does every other noteworthy and recent book of English grammar. They all say essentially the same thing: the singular they isn't ideal, but it's firmly established and better than anything else. Babajobu

Very good 15-minute ABC Radio program on this issue, 26 August, which you can audio-stream for another few weeks here. Tony 06:52, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Grammatical tense
The following discussion was moved from the Talk:Grammatical Tense discussion page, since all the contents being discussed were moved here. Steverapaport 10:08, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * I deleted all the following:


 * The claim that the future tense is nonexistant comes from the realization that the auxiliary "will" is not a prefix of the main verb. The proof comes from questions, "Will I go?" for example.


 * [Comment: I suppose the person meant suffix, not prefix, but even with that error corrected this paragraph is not correct.  The more important reasons for believing that English doesn't have a future tense are given by Huddleston & Pullum].


 * However, if one uses that line of reasoning with the "future tense", it is illogical to restrict it to only that verb form. Thus, it immediately follows that English has only two tenses, "past" and a form usually called "present", but more properly called "indeterminate" or "non-past."


 * [Comment: Logic is not the issue here.  Biber et al. take this position, but Huddleston & Pullum do not.  It's a question of theory, not logic].


 * These same arguments restrict the number of tenses in all the Germanic Languages.


 * [Comment: This is probably untrue (has the writer checked all the Germanic languages, including Yiddish and Faroese?) and certainly not helpful for readers].


 * Another way of counting tenses is to consider the number of forms that the verb itself can take. For most modern English verbs (except for "to be") there are essentially no more than five variants, made up of the infinitive; simple present (usually the 3rd person singular differs from the infinitive); present participle; past participle; and preterite (which is often the same as the past participle).  For example (with duplicate forms in brackets):


 * go; (go,) goes; going; gone; went
 * count; (count,) counts; counting; counted; (counted)
 * -; can; -; -; could
 * be; am, is, are; being; been; was, were


 * [Comment: This paragraph confuses inflectional forms of the verb with tenses, assuming that each inflectional form is a tense.  But no one believes that the past participle and the present participle are tenses.  So this section is very unhelpful]. Rsalkie 11:53, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * [Further comment: Counting "can" and the other modals as verbs may be stretching it. The modals cannot function as heads of VP, at least without at least an implied "main verb:" it is nonsense to say "Susie should" except in understanding some V to complement "should."  Probably better to regard them as a separate lexical category to help construct the Infl head of the InflP.  On morphological grounds, wouldn't it also be simpler to consider the modals as a separate lexical category than to postulate a group of paradigmatically defective V forms (no infinitive, gerund/present participle, past participle) that, unlike all other V, do not take the /s/ suffix in 3s present simple indicative active? ]
 * I do. :P lysdexia 12:49, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Spatial tenses?

 * Does anyone ever use the term "tense" to refer to space? I've never heard of this, and the textbooks in linguistics never have either. Rsalkie 11:53, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * I could only find Google evidence for spatial tense in constructed languages such as "Lojban", the "logical language". I don't see that it's ever been documented in a natural language, though. Gwimpey
 * The Hopi Language contains spatial tences.
 * I removed the reference to 'spatial tense'. I think there are some problems with the notion of spatial tense in natural language. See my post on Talk:Spatial tense. - Mark Dingemanse (talk)  15:40, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Further comment
This is a horrible way to discuss what the author of this page calls tenses. The tenses are simple - present, past, and future and any number of variations on these (immediate past, distat future, etc.).

Tense has nothing to do with verbal aspect which is what is actually being discussed here. English in essence only has two aspects - simple and progressive. Both of these aspects can be perfected (or completed) to form what is commonly referred to as the perfect and perfect progrssive aspects. In reality these are only the perfected forms of the simple and progrssive aspects.

As for what is past, present and future: every aspect can be expressed in every tense. One major flaw in the listing given is that the present perfect is a past tense. It is not. It is a present tense (the completed form of the present simple). The past perfect is the past form, and the future perfect is the future form. Add to that, the examples given under present perfect in the present tense section are present perfect progressive examples, not present perfect.

The entire verb section needs a gross overhaul.

--drew

Error in table of pronouns
What about the table of pronouns? What do *they* mean by saying 'my', 'our' ,'his' etc. are dative forms?


 * You're right - there's definitely an error in that table. Deb 22:17 Feb 9, 2003 (UTC)

Plural possesives of plurals that don't end in s?
This is something I always have problems with in writing. Is it, say, childrens' or children's? Sheeps' or sheep's? If there's some rule about these words, could it be added to the article, or at least mentioned that there isn't a rule if there isn't? Thanks much. ^_^ --Sparky the Seventh Chaos 17:15, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)

I've always been taught that you put the apostrophe after because your dropping the second s. So for apples, the incorrect plural is: apples's. Then you drop the last s and get apples'. ie. the only reason we do that is to correct the problem of 2 s's. Therefore, when the plural does not end in s, you treat it as you would a singular. Children's and Sheep's. But I'm no scholar, so I'm not willing to edit the article and say this. --EatMyShortz


 * For children, it is children's; for apples, it is apples'. Without consulting a handbook, I'll say that if the word does not end in "s," whether that word is singular or plural, you add an apostrophe and an "s." If a word (s or p) ends in "s," you simply add an apostrophe.  There are exceptions to this rule.  Like proper names and words from Greek where adding the extra syllable would make the pronunciation awkward:  Diogenes' not Diogenes's.  Though this doesn't actually seem to be an exception, does it?--Smallwhitelight 19:46, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

the owner's car James's hat (awkward, rewording can avoid this) the children's game the geese's honking
 * add 's to the singular form of the word (even if it ends in -s):
 * add 's to the plural forms that do not end in -s:

houses' roofs three friends' letters
 * add ' to the end of plural nouns that end in -s:

my brother-in-law's money
 * add 's to the end of compound words:

Todd and Anne's apartment  --Ino5hiro 16:26, 5 Jul 2005 (UTC)
 * add 's to the last noun to show joint possession of an object:

"This is something I always have problems with in writing. Is it, say, childrens' or children's? Sheeps' or sheep's?  If there's some rule about these words, could it be added to the article, or at least mentioned that there isn't a rule if there isn't? Thanks much."

It would be children's and sheep's I believe. Although the unit children contains more than one child, the children is treated as singular when dealing with possessive grammar, I think. However, it'd be treated as plural if you said something like "the children are sleeping." At any rate, that's how I'd make it into a possessive noun. And I think this has somewhat to do with pronounciation as well..

http://englishplus.com/grammar/00000131.htm

--awb

To make the plural of a family name possessive, you can add 'S or not. Many people will take the stance that one or the other is correct, but I think the only sensible thing to do is accept that they're both ok:

The Smiths' house. The Smiths's house. The Charleses' house. The Charleses's house. --JimmySeal 9:51, October 26, 2005 (UTC)


 * It doesn't matter what the word ends with. Regrettably, for names that end in 's', it is still acceptable, some say desirable, not to add another 's' after the apostrophe. This is most common in mythical and religious names: Jesus', St Blasius' Church, Venus'. Fowler said that in all other cases of s-final words, if the possessive adds a syllable when you say it, add 's (Joan Weiss's dog); if not, add just the apostrophe.

However, in my view, it's perfectly acceptable to add 's to every word, whether mythical or not, and irrespective of the final letter. Some house styles insist on this; many don't. Tony 01:35, 26 October 2005 (UTC)


 * What is preferred within Wikipedia articles? Is there an accepted format, or will certain articles contain both?--Elliskev 16:52, 27 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I suspect the MoS doesn't prescribe strictly, since opinion is so divided. I'd say both (1) s's in all cases, and (2) s' alone without s where the possessive adds no extra syllable, are both acceptable to most people. Where a syllable is added in speech, is might look odd without the final s (Jones' is better as Jones's, IMV).Tony 00:11, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Pass the preterite conditional, darling!
Some of this article is well written, but some of it still smacks of latinate grammatical terminology. Proper analysis of the English tense-aspect system is missing, along with use of auxilliary verbs. Giving pronouns as nominative, accusative, genitive and dative (?) is misleading. It is generally preferred to talk about subject, object and possesive pronouns and possessive adjectives. There is very little indication of how the grammar of English has changed over time. Can we have some linguists sort this out, please?
 * Gareth Hughes 00:29, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * The main reason IMHO to keep the mention of such things is that such did exist as such in Middle English, as well as historically in the other West Germanic dialects (even though many, such as Low Saxon dialects and many modern High German dialects have lost or are in the process of losing the genitive case, and Low Franconian dialects primarily preserve the entire case system in pronouns, retaining just the nominative and the genitive (true genitive case, not genitive clitic(s)) in normal nouns). On the other hand, I think that the ideas of genitive pronouns and possessive adjectives should be kept seperate (considering English has both), considering that they're separate in both English and in West Germanic dialects in general (if they have both).  146.151.47.17, 11:33, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Oh, and in addition, the overall grammar of English still retains traces of separate cases, as shown by things like preposition usage (as the difference between accusative or dative-using prepositions and genitive-using prepositions is still apparent, as shown by things like prepositions which use "of" after them, which historically were genitive, or which, at times, directly take a genitive pronoun (NOT possessive adjective), even though the difference between accusative-using and dative-using prepositions has been lost, and hence also the allative sense of the use of accusative with prepositions, as in, say, High German) and the ability to, for verbs that historically could take either dative nouns directly, or which used dative-using prepositions (but NOT accusative-using prepositions), to alternately (or not so alternatively) use prepositionless dative constructions, albeit without explicit separate marking of dative and accusative cases. 146.151.47.17, 11:41, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure I'm following what you're trying to say. It is true that English grammar has changed sufficiently over its history for Old English to be unintelligible to speakers of the modern language. However, it doesn't make much sense for an article on English grammar to plough through the history of English only to find out that they did things differently then. Referrence to German here is like referrence to Latin in the past: it confuses the issue. Sure comparative Germanic linguistics is a worthy subject, but it is not this subject. Descriptive grammar should do its thing on its own terms. Is there anyone who agrees? - Gareth Hughes 12:41, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * I was speaking in the context of West Germanic (and North Germanic also, considering that for a set of West Germanic dialects, English has had a lot of overall North Germanic influence, and Old English was relatively close to Old Norse, all things considered) linguistics overall, rather than viewing English as an isolated quantity, without a history, and without remains of that history left behind, often hidden in plain sight, such as that prepositions in English still have remainents of their taking genitive, accusative, and dative cases, even when the specific case distinctions are no longer being marked at all (such as with accusative and dative). Without understanding such matters, then it becomes more difficult to understand why specific verbs in English can or cannot take dative constructions (albeit without dative case marking), and so on.  For example, why do verbs that use "to" to mark a receiver of something able to make dative constructions, whereas many other prepositions do not have this capability?  Well, that's because, "to" originally took the dative case, whereas some other prepositions, such as "into", happened to take things like accusative, genitive, or (yep) instrumental case (yes, Old English was weird, for a set of West Germanic dialects, for having a distinct instrumental case; but then, of course Gothic had a separate vocative case, which is an oddity by Germanic language standards...).  Without history and context, languages're much harder to understand, because many things that do not make sense in isolation at a fixed point in time make perfect sense when you take their history and overall context into account.  146.151.47.17, 14:08, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * That's all very well, and I'm not disputing what you say, but this is an article on English grammar and not Germanic philology. There is consensus here that the article cover a descriptive treatment of Modern English grammar. What you propose goes against this: that's a comparative grammar. The difference is that descriptive grammars try to set the rules of grammar in their own image, rather than the image of any other language. It has taken centuries of struggle to be able to insist on this. I wrote the article on Aramaic language, which has a small section on the grammar of the language. Some may have found it helpful to say 'Aramaic lacks noun classes', but that would be as helpful as saying that 'English cannot mark nouns with tense': true, but a bit of misdirection. Likewise, a proto-Germanic treatment of case in English is misdirection. However, it would be appropriate for this article to have a section about the development of English grammar from Germanic roots to Modern English. Put yourself in the position of someone without any linguistics training coming accross this article, and wanting to know how English 'works', a treatment of comparitive philology isn't what they would want. Gareth Hughes 19:29, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * I never said that I was for simply going and trying to apply the rules of other languages to English, without regard for a descriptive approach. I do not propose simply trying to fit English within the rules of Latin, like misguided eighteenth and nineteenth century grammarians.  Rather, I am for a descriptive approach that is useful within a historical context, that is, in comparison to Middle English, Old English, and then reconstructed proto-West Germanic and proto-Germanic, as well with respect to other germanic languages which Old English was in contact with, such as Old Norse.  That is, approaching English from a descriptive standpoint, but doing it from one that is useful for analyzing it within its historical context, rather than removing it from it, and hence using common terms with those used for Middle English, Old English, West Germanic languages in general, and then finally Germanic languages in general, rather than ones that are specific to English alone.  Hence, that is why I think that for pronouns, the case names nominative, accusative, and genitive (for the actual genitive pronouns, not possessive adjectives) are appropriate, because they function like those of the same name in other Germanic languages historically in general, for the most part, besides the merger of the dative and accusative cases.  Note that I do not think they should be used when their use would be in appropriate, of course, like the common mistake of trying to view "my", "our", "your", etc. as genitive pronouns, rather than possessive adjectives, or the other common mistake of regarding "'s" as marking a genitive case, rather than acting as a possessive clitic which was historically derived from a now-defunct nominal genitive case.  I do not mean to view such within the rules of the predecessors of Modern English, and other Germanic languages, just to view such within common terms, when they are appropriate, which are suitable for discussing matters related to Modern English with respect to other Germanic languages, especially Old and Middle English.  (BTW, I am the same person as 146.151.47.17, but now I'm at a different location, using a dynamic IP)  09:44, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your response. I am in complete agreement with you. I was worried that the historical approach might be so complicated that Modern English grammar would get lost in a fog of defunct inflexions. I still would feel more comfortable with the labels subject pronoun and object pronoun (referring to the object of prepositions as well as verbs). Then it could be stated that the latter is a merger of the older cases. I'm not quite so comfortable with possessive case, as it does more than mark possession in English.


 * I feel that this article is about ready for an overhaul. Would you be willing to work on it? I would be happy to work with you on it, but would feel it's too much to do without some active collaboration. If you had an account it would make contributing and using WP a lot easier. Gareth Hughes 21:47, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

In the process of improving this article, you might want to take advantage of the bits of English grammar scattered all over Wikipedia in the form of individual articles. Some can be found in the LPOV section of the Countering Systemic Bias project. &mdash; mark &#9998; 00:21, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Mark, there is a lot of English grammar displayed in general grammar articles that need to be universalised. So, it might be a good idea to save some of it here, especially tables and the like, before it gets the rewrite. I had the thought that the article should start by expressing the distinction between standard English grammar (a relatively informal standard), and various dialect grammars. For example, "You done good" and "Ask a doctor their opinion" are not standard grammar, but are perfectly acceptable by many English speakers in certain contexts. Gareth Hughes 17:30, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Passive voice
What about passive? I think this is missing in the wikipedia article but I don´t know enough to write something about this topic. User:Ckorff

External link: Learning English online
I visited the "Learning English Online" external link and noted that one of their lessons on gerunds contained a very glaring spelling mistake i.e. "They are afraid on loosing the match"! There are also other grammatical and spelling anomalies scattered across the site. May I propose that this link be removed? User:203.116.59.24


 * I'm sure that the match was tied up for good reason; perhaps it had dangerous pyromaniancal tendencies and kept escaping from its matchbox. Most people would be afraid to loose it under such circumstances. 80.255 14:32, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Verbs
Wouldn't "transparent irregular verbs" better be classified as "strong verbs", since that is the term used in/for other Germanic languages? User:195.198.149.225

I agree, calling them strong/weak verbs would be simpler than the rather long-winded "transparent iregular verbs"

Description and Prescription
What would it take to divide these two things into their own articles. Warring over which should be represented is confusing an already confusing issue. The only people that benefit are those who already know the rules of English and the difference between prescription and description. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language often mingles discussion of the two, and I have on more than one occasion been made to believe that some rule was not actually a rule, only to discover that the book was discussing description in a convoluted manner. If a student, or other non-grammatico, turns to this article for information, they may well walk away thinking that "y'all" or has become an acceptable pronoun in written English, or that "their" will not stick in the throat of teachers and editors when used to rename "his." Think of the children--the children!!!--Smallwhitelight 20:08, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC
 * "Y'all" is perfectly acceptable in written English, descended as it is from the German "Ihr," and also because it is the only existing second-person plural in English. But you are certainly correct in that "they/their" is never acceptable as a third-person singular.  Neither are "he or she," "he/she," or "s/he."  All that aside, however, i agree that splitting descriptive from perscriptive would be both worthwhile and extremely helpful.Dunerat 07:59, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * We seem to agree on the substantive issue of separating the desc/presc grammars, though I am a little new here and don't really know how to go about it. I know to "be bold," but that seems very bold; it also seems like a mammoth undertaking, especially if you consider all of the sub pages that are muddling the desc/presc issue.  So, how do we get the ball rolling?


 * As for "y'all," I suppose it depends on what you mean by "written English." As a modestly competent neonate semi-professional grammarian (how's that for limiting qualification?), I tend to think prescriptive, formal written English.  In this case, not only is "y'all" out, but also any contraction--didn't, can't, and won't included.  Though the you as plural has the tendency to create confusion, it's ok for a word to have no altered plural form--fish, deer, moose--and that's  just in the animal kingdom.  It seems that I'm hungry, and all of those sound fairly tasty right now.  When I took Latin in high school, we translated "amat" as you love and "amatis" as y'all love.  Mind you, this was in Niceville, Florida.  On an additional, incidental point, use of second person is severly limited in formal writing, but thats not really much of an issue is a general discussion of grammar.


 * It occurs to me that in the prescriptive entry, a brief mention of the formal written rules may be worthwhile, but these may be covered in the entries that cover specific styles: APA, MLA, Turabian, etc..--Smallwhitelight 21:34, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * "Formal Written English," unfortunately, is kind of a misnomer. English (unlike say, French), does not have any governing bodies, only a rather large (over 40) collection of groups who define the accepted style of writing as it applies to their field only.  And they often have very different views on what is and is not acceptable writing.  While it is generally considered improper to write contractions (excepting in writing out speech), it is not incorrect.  The same applies to the second-person POV.  In fact, if one is addressing a group directly (without being a part of it), "y'all" is the really the only pronoun available.dunerat 21:12, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * I have to say that "y'all" is the most common address I generally hear directed at groups of people. Despite the, mostly slight, variances of the different formal writing styles, I am not aware of any prescriptive school that would allow y'all rather than its unmodified plural kin.  There are general commonalities among the various "formal" prescriptive Englishes--both stylistic and national--that could be easily addressed in separate pages.  APA, MLA, Chicago, and OSM styles should have their own specific rules detailed on their pages.  I fear that the prescriptive acceptance of "y'all" is a long way off.  ain't it a shame?--Smallwhitelight 20:23, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

didn't used to
I once used the phrase "I didn't used to like mustard", or something like that, in the presence of my Indian friend who speaks a more UK version of English than I do, and who strongly objected to that particular Americanism. I can see why the phrase (along with its interrogative counterpart) isn't grammatical: it contains two finite verbs. Nevertheless, I decided after careful consideration that the more grammatical alternatives ("used not to") have subtly different meanings. What do you guys think about it? -Lethe | Talk 08:27, August 9, 2005 (UTC)


 * While it certainly is a strange idiomatic construction, I think you mean "I didn't use to like mustard." And no, I can't provide an explanation.  I don't know about "used not to", but my tongue gets tied in knots just thinking about it. --timc | Talk 16:39, 9 August 2005 (UTC)


 * "used not to" is more correct for written or formal English, but "didn't used to" is standard in spoken English. Both mean the same as far as I can see. Shantavira 12:10, 25 August 2005 (UTC)


 * It's intensified; I don't see why it should be incorrect as such:
 * I am, I do be
 * I was, I did be
 * I used to be, I did used to be
 * I used to like, I did used to like
 * In the example above, the not liking is emphasized be negating the intensifier:
 * I did not used to like
 * as opposed to:
 * I did used not to like
 * Consider a question: Did you used not to like it? or Didn't you used to like it? - the alternative would be: Used you to not like it?
 * 80.255 13:40, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

As to "I didn't used to like mustard," I would have said "I used to not like mustard" as opposed to the alternatives here (such as "I used not to like mustard").

--awb


 * I don't like "didn't used to" and I would argue that "used not to" has a different meaning. When I was teaching English, I taught that the negative of "used to" is "didn't use to," which to me sounds correct and solves the double-finite problem.

Yes! Because the phrasal verb used to is only used in the past tense, with the meaning 'past habitual action/state', it can be quite confusing when it is combined with the auxiliary operator do. The operator always carries the tense, which logically has to be past tense, and the main verb is given as a bare infinitive. Thus, one would say, "I did use to..." or, "I didn't use to...". It is bad grammar to use used, a finite form, where an infinitive is called for. However, as has been pointed out above, use can act as its own operator, and does not need do. In this case, it is finite and carries tense. Therefore, one would say, "I used to..." or, "I used not to...". Using use as an operator is quickly going out of fashion. --Gareth Hughes 13:18, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

This article is a shocker
It needs a complete rethink; some of the existing text is worth retaining, but on the whole it's very unfriendly to the user. May I ask, who is the intended audience? Non-native speakers? Learners of English? Children? Native speakers?

Parts of it need to be simplified. A longer comparitive overview at the start would be useful.

In particular, explicit reference to the various competing systems of grammar is essential. These systems have the hallmarks of ideologies, so it's going to be difficult to achieve consensus. There may be a case for reducing this main article to (1) an account of how English grammar has evolved historically, (2) a comparison of English grammar with that of other languages, and (3) a brief explanation of the main systems of grammar, with links to daughter articles. This would at least minimise ideological tension between the competing communities, and allow them to explain their system in separate articles, unencumbered by the inevitable conflicts in writing a one-size-fits-all article. In my view, we need to fork 'Traditional grammar of English', which primarily classifies words at or below the sentence level, and 'Functional grammar of English', which deals with the full range of interpersonal and textual aspects of the grammar.

Tony 02:16, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

We should probably also consider moving the stuff that deals exclusively with Late Modern English grammar (i.e., the approximately the whole article) to Late Modern English grammar. Or incorporate some stuff about Shakespearean grammar and make it Modern English grammar. English grammar should deal with the grammar of Old and Middle English as well as Modern English and particularly the difference between English grammar and the grammar of other languages, although of course it might well remain a stub under this system for some time.

The intended audience can be assumed to be anyone capable of reading the article, IMO. Don't assume the reader knows elementary-school formalistic English grammar, just that he has a functional capability to understand the language. &mdash;Simetrical (talk) 02:43, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

I basically agree with Simetrical. We need to establish agreement among key contributors for a significant structural alteration. Does anyone object in principle? I'm unsure whether it's a good idea to have a daughter article entitled just Modern English grammar—which grammar? Traditional or functional?Tony 03:09, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

By tradition vs. function you mean prescription vs. description, right? I think that any article on the grammar of a language should describe the grammar of the actual language, including the grammar of those who follow prescriptivist rules and those who don't. A separate article could be made on prescriptions only under some suitable name, but the grammar article should include all usages, with more common usages given correspondingly more prominence. Anything else is, IMO, POV. &mdash;Simetrical (talk) 00:00, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

No problem with what you're saying, except that to include all usages would take hundreds of Kb and some years. The grammar is HUGE. I think it's better to start with a detailed summary, with carefully chosen examples, and not too many at that. There seems to be a tendency to lay out large examples (I've just removed one from the article on History of the English language, because its usefulness was unclear.

There's often a fuzzy boundary between describing and prescribing, don't you think? I'd say that traditional (parsing) grammar tends towards the prescriptive, and systemic functional grammar towards the descriptive. But they are merely attributes of the two systems. They are distinguished more basically by their objectives: trad. grammar aims to classify (written) words within sentences according to a set of rules; SFG aims to describe the conceptual framework of the grammar, and to account for its interpersonal, experiential, textual and logical metafunctions. What, for example, is the difference in meaning between 'No one seemed to notice the writing on the wall' and 'What no one seemed to notice was the writing on the wall'? By the way, the article on SFG is stubbish, and pretty bad. Tony 01:22, 5 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I think we're tripping over our own perspective, folks. If you read Italian grammar or Swedish grammar, they're just simple but comprehensive references to the main points of grammar in that language.  No history, no disputes, none of that introspective horsepuckey.  That's really all we need here too, and it would help a lot.


 * There are about 350 million mother-tongue English speakers, and well over 450 million second-language and foreign-language English speakers. I submit that it's the second, larger group that needs this article most, and the article should be directed to them.  (No I'm not one of them, my mother tongue is Canadian English.) Let's just make a nice, clean reference article along the lines of the two examples I gave, and then put all the disputes and theories and histories in other more esoteric articles where they belong.  I don't think a complete rewrite is needed, just a few edits to emphasise more fact and less crap. Steve Rapaport 10:55, 30 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Not sure I agree about the non-native speaker bit—what reasons do you have for saying this? And I'm afraid that 'simple, comprehensive references to the main points of grammar' is not straightforward—what type of grammar do you mean? Traditional, parsing grammar? Tony 12:42, 30 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Not sure I understand your questions, Tony. I think an English Grammar article could be more useful if it begins from the point of describing the mechanics of how to put together words in English.  That is, grammar as distinct from vocabulary.  If you are trying to learn any new language, you need to know its vocabulary, and its grammar, first.  Later come things like usage, expressions and colloquialisms, and at a rather advanced level come disputes on which usages are obsolete, which expressions are truly "grammatical", etc.  So at the article's current size, I think we'd do best to concentrate on "grammar" as in "how to put together a sentence in English", as opposed to in Japanese, Spanish, etc.   If we later want to have the advanced discussions for scholars of English, that's fine, but it's out of level for this size article I think.


 * As for why I want to aim the article at ESL and EFL speakers, it's because it makes such a good guide to the layers of knowledge you need to describe a language. People born to a language tend to see mostly the tiny rules and exceptions that they had trouble with or argue about, but those little bits are hardly the core of the grammar of the language.  The core is sentences, nouns, verbs, subjects, objects, etc.  And that's what this article is lacking most.  Again, you'll understand if you compare with the Italian or Swedish examples I gave.  They're clean and simple, and that's good.  They're roughly the same size as this article, but much heavier on facts and examples, and lighter on obscure dialectical and historical usage notes.  Don't you think that's a good guide? Steve Rapaport 14:21, 30 September 2005 (UTC)


 * P.S. I just looked it over again and from that point of view, it's not bad -- just rather incomplete.   I think what the article mostly needs is more on sentence structure, ways to change a word's part of speech, more advanced structures like verbals, and some nicer formatting.  If the silly bits want to survive as little footnotes at the end, I won't object too loudly -- someone will remove them eventually.

Then a separate and very useful article should be entitled 'English grammar for non-native speakers'. There, the particular grammar that is useful for non-native speakers in the initial stages of learning English can be dealt with in greater depth from that angle. However, there is no good reason that an article entitled more broadly 'English grammar' should take that stance. Here, I think it's unwise for any one type of grammar to predominate, since that will cause ructions among the adherents of what are diametrically opposed views. For example, I don't believe that the core of English grammar is 'sentences, nouns, verbs, subjects, objects, etc.'. I'm not in favour of presenting a grammar that is restricted to the sentence level, and is centred on word classification. That is very limiting, and in the end, inaccurate and not very useful. Tony 15:33, 30 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Or perhaps a separate useful article (which already exists, Disputed English grammar) could be expanded to handle paradoxes, slang and usage, and whether English is simple or complex. None of those, to my mind, are relevant to a 2-3-page article on English grammar.


 * As for "types" of grammar, are you referring to different systems of descriptive grammar, such as Huddleston, Biber, etc, or just the descriptive/prescriptive distinction?  I thought it was pretty much agreed here that prescriptive and descriptive grammars should receive separate treatment (either in separate articles, or separate sections of one.)  So I assume you're talking instead about different systems of describing existing English grammar.  Which personally, at the 2-3 page level, seems superfluous to me.    One reasonable system that covers most of the cases should do it.   Sections on different systems for describing English grammar could be appended, or even be added to "disputed English grammar".


 * If you don't believe that the core of English grammar lies at the sentence or word level, I'm curious where you believe it lies. But I think "word classification" is a red herring -- neither this article as it stands, nor the two example articles I pointed to (which I'm still not sure you have read), spends any time at all discussing word classification or parsing.  This article as it stands concentrates on synthesis, putting together a sentence, not analysis, taking one apart.  Both are part of grammar, but I don't see how either is limiting or inaccurate or useless.  What are you suggesting instead?

Let's take the second, rather short paragraph of the article:

'The grammar of English is in some ways relatively simple, and in others quite complex. For example, word order is relatively fixed because English is an analytic language and this aspect of grammar is therefore relatively simple. The verbal system, on the other hand, is quite large and complex, like those of many other Indo-European languages.'

Facts: I don't see any part of the grammar that is simple. Word order is neither fixed nor simple, and the given reason for this assertion will leave most readers in the dark.

Expression: 'relatively' occurs three times; 'quite' occurs twice, and is better avoided because it is vague and begs questions; 'verbal' is ambiguous; 'those' should be 'that'; the implication is that many other Indo-European languages are not both simple and complex, and have complex word order. There's also an implication that the 'verbal' system is relatively 'unfixed' (supple? changeable?), which I think is an unwise assertion, particularly in the lead.

There is a lot of work to do. Tony 15:46, 30 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Take the second paragraph, please! I would be as happy as you to see it vanish. Steve Rapaport 20:25, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

The core of the grammar lies at the clause level, not that of the sentence. The article is structured around word classification: section headings of nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. Unless you're starting out learning English as a foreign language, these are very limited; beyond stock sentences, such as 'Mary sees the cat', they are typically misleading.


 * Well, sure. I agree that you could build the whole grammar from the clause level and that it would be a great spot to begin.  I don't think you'd be able to dispense with nouns, verbs, etc., but you could certainly begin with clauses, principal and subordinate, then define subjects and predicates, and work in phrases, verbals, etc.  A fine way to go.  It wouldn't replace the parts-of-speech breakdown but would make a great complement to it and perhaps even become the principal part of the article.  You'd find a lot more of the language comes naturally, as you say.  I would love to look over your efforts.

The first section, on word order, is extremely superficial. 'Structurally, English is a subject verb object (SVO) language, meaning that it prefers a sequence of subject, verb, object in its simplest (declarative) statements with end punctuation.' Really? 'Food is what we need now'. 'The experiment was conducted without a hitch.'

What is 'end punctuation'? Tony 02:56, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree: the second paragraph is criminal. I'm no fan of the first, either.

"English grammar is the study of grammar in the English language. Grammars of English can be either prescriptive or descriptive. Prescription sets rules for language, while description simply describes the way a language is spoken; this article attempts to be primarily descriptive. It is important to understand that experts disagree about many parts of English grammar: what follows is just one analysis among many."

The prescriptive/descriptive issue rears its head far too early. It should be a standard encyclopedic article on English grammar; no less, no more. The article would best begin: "The English language may be classed loosely into nine Parts of Speech: Noun, Pronoun, Verb, Adverb, Adjective, Preposition, Article, Conjunction, and Interjection." Keep it simple. 203.206.244.161 09:47, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

It's just that I don't think word classifications should receive more than a brief overview, in one subsection. There's far more important stuff to talk about in the grammar. Like the way we start sentences (quite distinctive in English, and central to one aspect of grammar, the 'message'). Tony 15:05, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree with 203.206.244.161 that this should be a concise, although robust, encyclopedic entry. His suggestion to start the article with the sentence he wrote as an example succinctly introduces this topic and includes the most basic facts about the composition of the language's grammatical makeup. This article will need a good introduction, and I think we have seen a fine way to begin the first paragraph. The introduction should also be brief and to-the-point, teaching facts before nuances. If we can then agree on the subsequent categories and content to follow, I know that this article will be tremendously improved. CraigRorrer 07:55, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Free source material for this article
A while back, I decided to work on a rewrite for this article, but never got round to finishing it. If anyone would like to use the material that I put together to improve this article, you can find it at user:garzo/lala. Let me know if you find it useful.

No signature on previous comment. The article you link to is, like this one, hooked almost solely on word classification. Tony 02:57, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Other topics in English Grammar
Most of this section is trivial and badly written. Paradoxes and Slang have little to do with the rest of the article - Paradoxes, I believe, should be entirely taken out, while Slang should be rewritten. It's not a bad category, I think, though it should be put elsewhere in the article, but the current content of it is trivial rubbish. External links should remain. Rarr 14:42, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree. Tony 14:46, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Me too. I fail to see how the fact that paradoxes are not grammatically incorrect in English is vitally important to know, and the slang section is fairly awful. Lupus

Template:Disputed == ==

Seeing as how this was added about nine months ago by an anon user who, as far as I can tell, has never come to the talk page to discuss the matter, I've removed the template for now. If anyone would like to point out specific facts that they dispute, feel free to restore it. &mdash;Simetrical (talk) 05:49, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Disputed template

 * I write regarding the disputed template. May I ask, exactly what is disputed?  I cannot find a discussion on this page that is active, showing that there isn't a dispute over anything.  The disputed template is meant to be used when there is an active dispute, which there is none.
 * Because of this, I suggest the template be removed until a thread on the topic is started. I won't do it as I've never edited this article before, but I am interested to know what the dispute is about.  Neonumbers 11:09, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Tony1 restored the template with the promise to return. It's been over a month, and he has not returned, nor did he ever mention which facts were disputed. I remove the template. -lethe talk 07:04, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Paradoxes
Whoever called "I am asleep" a paradox had probably never heard of lucid dreaming. Also "No one wrote this." could possibly be a true statement (Does "this" refer to the sentence? Are we quoting a spoken statement?). I've replaced these with a real paradox. Jimp 05:59, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

whacky flow-chart
Can someone tell me why active vs passive, and person, impact on the decision of which tense to use? Tony 01:00, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

So again, is it the caption and placement of the flowchart that are wrong, or should the flowchard itself be wholly removed from the article? The caption says:

"This flowchart maps the important factors in deciding which tense will be used in an English sentence."

It certainly does not do that.

Unless someone can provide a good reason not to, I'll remove the flowchart in about a week. Tony 13:11, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Add section on regional variation?
The shall/will debate brings to mind the possibility that there should be some reference to the fact that there are regional variations in English grammar. For example, the article makes a distinction between the present perfect ("have listened") and the simple past ("listened") which is more-or-less consistent with current American usage. However, British speakers frequently appear to use the present prefect as interchangeable with the simple past, and Europeans who are fluent speakers of English as a second language very frequently use the present perfect where the simple past is intended.

-- Bob

spivak pronouns relatively rare?
The statement that "spivak pronouns are relatively rare" is overstating the matter!! To my my certain knowledge they are non-existant! I'm a native speaker have been speaking and listening to English for 50 years all over the world including the US and the UK where English is the predominant language. The first time I ever met a spivak pronoun was just now after reading about it here! It does not exist and reference to it should be removed.

Would anyone like to disagree?

Word Order
The section talks of noun phrases and verb phrases and the example given for "simple modifiers precede the noun phrases" shows "Fred's sister ran quickly to the store". It might be helpful to readers to note that the noun phrase can also take precedence over the verb phrase, with the verb phrase turned to a simple adverb appended afterwards. "Fred's sister ran to the store quickly." expresses the same and appears a less unusual construct than the original example. Any comments? CraigRorrer 09:56, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Word order in English is very supple. That's why I don't like the original bits of the "Word order" section, including Fred's sisten, and apples; these are two examples of a huge number of possible word orders, and they give the reader no idea of why you'd choose one word order over another. Better to remove them if they can't be rewritten into more cogent information. Tony 10:52, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Regroup and Rewrite
Since there is consensus that this entire article needs to be rebuilt, let’s focus first on the outline necessary to do this. I suggest that the primary areas center on proper English grammar, as we learned in school and found in respectable print publications and periodicals. I also suggest that we separate this entirely from “everyday” grammar usage. For example, vague references should be its own category in the formal/literary group and colloquial “you/they” usage have a corresponding category in the latter group. Sound like a good way to start? CraigRorrer 06:52, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

The difficult tense
<>

My reply: People have long been aware that Present Perfect is difficult to explain: http://www.englishtense.com/newapproach/2_7.htm You seem to have agreed to the difficulty: "I'm too tired to think." So, how can one put as simple as in your words: "The present perfect tense is for something that, as of now, has been completed"?

Conventionally, grammars have missed the tense-changing process: http://www.englishtense.com/newapproach/1_3.htm

As the process illustrates, Present Perfect can say either a finish or an unfinish: Ex: I have worked there in the past. (a finish) Ex: I have worked there since 2003. (an unfinish) Being unaware of the process, people have failed to explain the tense.

There is a small forum intended for discussion of English tense: http://www.englishtense.com/discuss

Tautological tense description
Hi all, I am a native speaker, but otherwise without any linguistic training. I came across this article for help with a difficult tense description for my own writing, but found the following two descriptions unhelpful:


 * Future perfect: "I shall/will have listened." Indicates that an action will occur after some other event.
 * Future-in-past perfect: "I would have listened." Indicates that an action would occur after some other event.

Since I am already a bit fuzzy on what the difference is between "will" and "would", trying to distinguish them by saying that "will" means "something will occur" and "would" means "something would occur" is not helpful. Isn't there some restriction on one of these tenses that it refers to actions that take place after the phrase is uttered? For example, I would not say "By the time I finished elementary school I will have listened to a thousand Barney songs". But I would say "By the time my son finishes elementary school, he will have listened to a thousand Barney songs." and "Had Barney existed in the '70s, I would have listened to a thousand Barney songs."

Can an expert please help fix this? David s graff 20:06, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

I am not an expert, but here's my view. The sentence Had Barney existed in the '70s, I would have listened to a thousand Barney songs. uses the conditional mood; would have listened is the past conditional form of the verb to listen. Here, the past conditional is used in response to the counterfactual proposition had Barney existed in the '70s. In that sentence, the word would does not indicate any kind of future tense.

So what are some examples of the future-in-past tense? Suppose you are writing your autobiography and are working on the chapters about your childhood. You might say:

"Every time my baby sister woke me up in the middle of the night, I would fall asleep in school." Here, the boldface clause is the future-in-past tense, because falling asleep in school is something that happened in the past, but it happened after your baby sister waking you up, so it is future in relation to that event.

Here's another example. Suppose you are writing a history of the United States. You might say:

"FDR took office in 1933 and would remain in office until 1945." Here again the boldface is future-in-past tense. Remaining in office is something that happened in the past, but it happened after he took office.

Of course, you could also express the same fact like this:

"FDR took office in 1933 and remained in office until 1945." Here the word remained is simple past tense.

So why would you ever use the future-in-past to convey that particular meaning? Because it cues the reader that your narrative is still in 1933. In other words, you are planning to write more about what FDR did while he was in office. The would remain in office until 1945 is a kind of preview within your narrative so you use the future-in-past tense. But when you say remained instead of would remain, you cue the reader that your narrative is now going to continue from 1945; you are done talking about FDR's presidency. Here, the phrase remained in office until 1945 is not a preview, but rather part of the primary stream of your narrative.

Compare the future perfect tense. You gave a good example of that with this sentence:

""By the time my son finishes elementary school, he will have listened to a thousand Barney songs." The phrase will have listened is future perfect. You aren't saying that he has already listened to a thousand Barney songs; it's something that will happen (at least partly) in the future. But it will happen before he finishes elementary school. You could say that finishing elementary school is the reference event.

The future perfect tense is used for an event that will occur after you make the statement, but before some reference event.

The future-in-past tense is used for an event that occurred before you make the statement, but after some reference event.

Hope that helps.--Mathew5000 16:47, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

rules?
I don't like the way that it currently starts: too rule-oriented. English is unusual in its decentralisation—as opposed to French. That's why style and grammar are more subtle in English, IMHO. I'd refer to "patterns" rather than "rules". BTW, singular "rule" seems odd. Tony 01:50, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I still don't like "rules" in the definition. The grammar is what we observe in usage. Perhaps there are some rules, but explicit rules can't/don't cover every aspect of the grammar. Tony 02:06, 4 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I believe that linguists generally agree that any grammar can be fully specified by a set of deterministic rules, which may of course be connected to semantics or other extremely complex things. The term rule is ubiquitous in works of psycholinguistics, as far as I know.  The AHD ' s definition 2a of grammar is "The system of rules implicit in a language, viewed as a mechanism for generating all sentences possible in that language."  There are of course other senses of the term, but they all tie back to the general idea of analysis of the set of possible utterances within a given language, and that set can presumably be defined in terms of rules. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 21:29, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Genitive Case in Pronouns
The previous version of the genitive cases for pronouns mixed possessive pronouns with possessive determiners (e.g. "mine" versus "my"). For example, the first person singular genitive previously was "mine", which is a possessive pronoun (i.e., used like any other pronoun; "That's mine" vs. *"That's my"), whereas the second person singular genitive was "your", which is a possessive determiner (i.e., used like any other determiner; "That's your hat" vs. *"That's your"). I cleared up the issue in a relatively non-destructive way: possessive determiners are on the left of the forward slash, possessive pronouns are on the right. — Augur 04:18, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Is it worth explicitly distinguishing them on the basis of "predicative" and "attributive"? Tony 04:29, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
 * You're right. I was editing this page as you said that to explain my most recent edit. Specifically, the table is supposed to be for case pronouns, and while my previous edit was meant to clarify the your/yours issue, it introduced new words that didn't fit the purpose of the table. So I've removed the possessive determiners entirely and left only the possessive pronouns. Were it not for Moogle10000's undiscussed edit... — Augur 04:39, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

recent edit to the opening
I've changed the opening, which I found to be most unsatisfactory. Just why we need to introduce dialects right at the top is beyond me. I've used "how meanings are created" as a definition that encompasses both descriptive and prescriptive accounts of the grammar. The rest of the lead requires intensive work. Tony 07:10, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Past imperfect?
The second table in the Voice section of this article lists "I was listening to the music" as an example of the past imperfect tense. I am unaware of any such tense in English. I know that Spanish has an imperfect tense (though not a past imperfect) and that the imperfect "escuchaba" might translate as "was listening," but in English "was listening" is an example of the past progressive, no? --ForDorothy 01:40, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Never mind. I found the explanation elsewhere in the article. --ForDorothy 01:45, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


 * i think that english makes a distinction between those two tenses. i speak italian, and its hopefully similar enough to spanish that you get it. we have imperfect "ascoltavano" they were listening. but we also have 'past progressive' like 'stavano ascoltando' . we have this in the present. "ascoltano" and "stanno ascoltando". the difference is between "i listen" and "i am listening". there is no distincion between the normal imperfect and the progressive imperfect in english. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.182.28.232 (talk • contribs).

Assessment comment
Substituted at 20:32, 2 May 2016 (UTC)