The Imperfect Tense

I know my grammar. I was a language teacher for over twenty years and I learnt my first two languages via the "grammar grind" method.  Plus I did Latin in the first year of Grammar School.  Latin grammar is pretty comprehensive. I also argue fiercely that acquiring knowledge of the grammar of the language is a short cut to mastery of that language. Grammar is the backbone. It allows you to know who is doing what to whom, when and how.

I'm with Naom Chomsky on there being a universal grammar. There are certain things we need to say in whichever language we're using and every language will have a way of doing that.    

I'd like today to explore the imperfect tense. It seems to have gone out of fashion a little in English and is mistaken often for passive language. I argue there's still a difference between the imperfect, the past and the preterite though different languages allow an overlap of these three.

The name says it all. We are talking about an unfinished or an imperfect action. There are two main uses for it. It can be used for a continuous action or a repeated action.

 

Continous action

We often see it as "was …. ing" in English:

He was sitting in the lounge, reading a book.

They were playing badminton outside.

It was raining heavily.

This is the one that is frequently mistaken for passive language. Actually, though, there is a world of difference between "It was raining heavily" and "It rained heavily." The latter is a completed action. The former isn't.

 

Interrupted action

"Was … ing" comes into its own for interrupted actions.

He was eating his supper when the phone rang.

She was loading the car when a cyclist stopped and asked for directions.

He was just about to put the kettle on when lights went out.

 

Repeated action in the past

We cheat here a little in English and don't use a verb form as such except "was" and "were".

e.g.:

He was a very rich man.

They were poor.

I was happy then.

Otherwise we often use "used to" or "would" e.g.:

He used to cycle to school every day.

She used to live in a hovel.

They would put the milk bottles out every night.

Sometime we use the normal preterite with extra words to indicate that the action is repeated:

He took her to school every day.

In the summer he took two weeks off work.

Every time they crossed the road he took hold of her hand.

 

A couple of quirks in other language

French has a special form of the preterite it only uses in literature – the past historic. In conversation it uses the simple past – i.e. "I have seen" etc.

In German the preterite and the imperfect are the same.

Why we should care

The imperfect offers a nuance of meaning. We lose out if we dismiss this as "passive" language.       

   

 

Some thoughts on two important past tenses

The imperfect

This sort of describes itself. It’s used for an incomplete action. In French it is expressed by in endings on a certain part of the verb or “je travaillais” or “il allait”. These two can mean three different things in English: I would work, I used to work, or I was working and he would go, he used to go or he was going. All are incomplete, continuous and / or repeated actions.

Don’t say “She was sitting”, say “She sat” say some of the gurus. However, I’d argue that these two phrases carry subtle but important different meanings. “She was sitting” implies an interrupted action. It also slows the pace somewhat and makes the action part of the setting. “She would sit” implies a repeated action with a sense of approval from the subject whereas “used to” implies a repeated action that may not be continued.

“’She was sitting’” is too passive,” say some of the gurus. I don’t agree. It has nothing to do with activity or passivity. It has to do with exact meaning.

I was very pleased that a colleague from a rival institution to the one where I used to teach recommended to a critique group friend of mine in her Masters class that she should consider using this tense.  

This tense exists in some form or other in all languages. Let’s make sure we use it to pinpoint our meaning.

The pluperfect

The “plus” perfect if you like. It means you go back one further stage in the past. The word “had” is important here. Here’s an example: “He had been to market earlier. There hadn’t been as many people there as usual so he was able to get back by ten. Now he was sitting in the garden enjoying the sun. The phone rang. Darn. He’d better answer it.”

Again the gurus will recommend avoiding this tense. I’m afraid I do tend to obey this time though I do the recommended trick of using it once or twice to show that we’re that one stage further back in the past and then using the normal past tense, so that we get something like this:

“He had been to the market earlier and Jed had recommended the Kelly Bronze turkeys.  He’d agreed to buy one and whistled to himself as he gave Jed his week’s salary. He hoped Marge would be pleased with his purchase. He set off home, daydreaming about Christmas dinner.

As he approached the house he began to feel sick. “Here goes,” he thought as he slid his key into the lock.””

Again, this exists in all grammars though sometimes a language may have an idiomatic way of expressing it.

In pre-wordprocessing days my father-in-law paid a young woman in the village to type up his thesis. Every time he’d written “had” as part of a pluperfect, she’d typed “has” or “have.”

“I don’t think they have a pluperfect in Welsh,” said my father-in-law.

Ah but they do, sort of. You may often hear Welsh people saying something like “He was after having cooked his supper.” A little word they use with a verb is very similar to the word for “after” in Welsh. So, the pluperfect is simple: “He was after having …. “

Universal grammar?

It seems we need all of these nuances of meaning and a grammatical form for them in each language allows them to exist. Let’s make the most of our language to make our meaning crystal clear, even if it means ignoring some of the current trends.                               

 

For the love of grammar

The Grammar School

Yes, I went to a grammar school. It raised my expectations considerably and now I realise what an incredibly apt name it had. We had six lessons of English a week in our first year. There were two lessons on English literature, one on composition and three on grammar. In addition we learnt Latin and French through the Grammar Grind method. We thoroughly deconstructed language.

Grammar as a tool

The analysis is interesting and understanding how language works is very useful. I recognise a run-on sentence when I see one, though it is difficult to explain to someone who doesn’t have the terminology.

I also really understand what my computer means when it says “fragment – consider revising”. It’s telling me I’ve produced a piece of writing that does not contain a finite verb.

What’s a finite verb? A verb that has a defined tense, voice, person and mood. Pardon? A verb that is working, if you prefer.

What grammar does

Grammar is the backbone of the language. It shows who is doing what to whom. Without grammar what does this string of words mean: broken chair window caretaker mend. There are several possibilities. Grammar sorts it out.

No hard and fast rules

Surprisingly there are not except in those languages where there is some sort of authority looking after it. How grammar works differs from language to language. In the end it is about clarity. Interestingly, English is allowed to be fluid and evolve. It has no authority insisting on certain qualities. The OED advises us about words and Fowler about how we string them together.  Both, however, bow to usage.

Many people still frown on split infinitives but we now tend to boldly split them. And many frown upon sentences starting with “and” or “but” yet sometimes it can be quite effective. We were always admonished for using “different to” – it should be different from – but this is being more widely accepted now. 

The misunderstood imperfect tense

This is what prompted me to write this article. We are beginning to lose the sense of difference between “He was sitting.” and “He sat.” The former is imperfect, the latter preterit (though often used in an imperfect sense). He was sitting when the next action came along. He sat there may be over a protracted amount of time but the action is over and done with. “He used to sit” or “he would sit” imply a habit, all three conveyed in many other languages by what we call the imperfect tense. The action is not yet over. It is “imperfect”.

Knowing when to break the rules

This depends a little on knowing what the rules are in the first place. Then it’s important to ask the question “Is my change really effective?” It often has less impact than you might think. A copy-editor will pick this up. If they’ve used “track changes” to edit it may be worth hiding those changes and only putting them back on when you think any passage has lost its impact and even then consider whether  you can still keep the impact but keep to the rules and just rephrase.       

If we all understand what the writer means, what does it matter, we might ask.

Well, firstly, American publishers expect correct grammar. We all want our work published both sides of the Atlantic, don’t we?   

Secondly, grammar brings clarity and we want our texts to be as clear as possible. As English is a widespread first language, though its usage differs considerably form continent to continent, and the first foreign language for many people, we need as much clarity as possible.

Worth getting to know grammar, then?