Saturday, April 17, 2010

Ted's tenses

In Sally Forth, Sally's been fretting about not being spontaneous enough. Today she looks for a time she was spontaneous. What interests me is Ted: his use of the past tense ("everyone we knew") indicates that they scared everyone so much they had to make new friends.

it scared and scarred everyone we knew

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2 Comments:

At 11:18 AM, April 17, 2010 Blogger Jan had this to say...

To me, "that scared everyone we knew" is just normal sequence of tenses, with no implication as to whether we still "know" the people referred to. The way I learned it, you only violated sequence of tenses to stress the present-ness of the second verb: "that scared everyone we know" would be the marked usage. (But wouldn't it imply that they hadn't made any new friends since the incident -- that the people they "knew" and the people they "know" are the same set?)

 
At 11:24 AM, April 17, 2010 Blogger The Ridger, FCD had this to say...

I see that, and I'm not entirely serious, but it struck me as funny.

 

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