Mesaĝoj: 77
Lingvo: English
UUano (Montri la profilon) 2011-septembro-26 21:16:22
He said that he has been personally responsible for the return of more than 5,000 items to Egypt since he became head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities in 2002.Whenever I am having a hard time with tenses, I find it helpful to re-structure a sentence.
If you take out the "he said that" bit, you could write:
"Since he became head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities in 2002, he has been personally responsible for the return of more than 5,000 items to Egypt." Since it can be understood this way, I have no problem understanding the original arrangement.
Now - if the original had read "He said that he had been personally responsible...", my assumption as the reader would be that his agency in returning these items was long ago, or that there was a definite and insuperable conclusion to it. The use of "has" rather than "had" seems to flow well with the use of "since...2002", which would allow that further items could be returned (and also, that he is still head of the council - in other words, his action is repeatable).
But in any case - whether my take be right or wrong, grammatically speaking - the usage in this example is perfectly understandable to your everyday American (if I may be considered such) and I might not even have noticed the tense of that clause if it weren't for this debate. Reading that passage in a newspaper, I wouldn't flinch.
UUano (Montri la profilon) 2011-septembro-26 21:25:35
gianich73 (Montri la profilon) 2011-septembro-27 00:43:46
sudanglo (Montri la profilon) 2011-septembro-27 11:48:36
The expression signals a period of time extending to the present. This is precisely when the Present Perfect is appropriate - for unfinished time. The Simple Past is for finished time (ie THEN).
This discussion has only dragged on because Ceiger (whose personal usage can be non-standard) wished to argue the toss in reaction to my attempt to assist a non-native speaker.
In reporting the Antiquities Head's comments, I am not sure that the use of 'had' would necessarily imply that he no longer occupied that position.
However, the line of argument that a Past Perfect might imply something no longer to be the case is the most promising justification for an unusual use of the Present Perfect in reported speech.
However a foreign learner needs to know the standard pattern. And 'He told me that he HAS done it' is not standard.
Chainy (Montri la profilon) 2011-septembro-27 12:17:03
sudanglo:This discussion has only dragged on because Ceiger (whose personal usage can be non-standard) wished to argue the toss in reaction to my attempt to assist a non-native speaker.I think you're being a bit unfair on Ceigered, to be honest. There are clearly times when it is possible to use the present perfect after 'he said that..'. This is a grammatical fact which can be found in any book for learners of English (check out Murphy's, for example). Your insistence on dismissing this idea is what has dragged out the discussion here.
UUano (Montri la profilon) 2011-septembro-27 12:23:32
I also think we should agree that non-standard does not mean wrong.
Chainy (Montri la profilon) 2011-septembro-27 12:41:20
UUano:I think we will all have to agree to disagree on foreign language pedagogy and move on.Well, Sudanglo's reasoning seems to switch between a) arguing for a simplified way of explaining English grammar to foreign learners, and b) arguing against the very possibility of using the present perfect after 'he said that...'.
If it is a question of teaching methods, then perhaps it's best to start off with a simple presentation and then move to the finer details later, but that goes without saying.
UUano:I also think we should agree that non-standard does not mean wrong.In this case, it is not a case of 'non standard' versus 'standard', or 'formal' versus 'colloquial'. It's just a case of what is grammatically correct or not. And the use of the present perfect after 'he said that' is perfectly fine. It's a question of what your are trying to emphasise, whether it is still true and directly relevant to the present (or at least you firmly believe it to be true now). The shift in tenses in reported speech is only absolutely necessary if the whole affair is clearly in the past. I tried to give some examples of this in an earlier post.
Chainy (Montri la profilon) 2011-septembro-27 12:57:01
sudanglo:'He said he has been at home' is like saying 'Li diris tiam, ke antaŭ nun (aŭ ĝis nun) li hejmas - which is as unsettling as the offending English.That is a bad example, because you are fundamentally changing the sentence by adding 'then', which acts as a marker for a point in the past. With the addition of 'then', it is clearly not possible to use the present perfect.
However, if you do not add 'then' or any other time marker for the past(such as 'yesterday', 'last week') etc, then it is possible to use the present perfect after 'he said that...'.
If you use the present perfect, then you are highlighting the relevance to the present. Imagine you're listening to a speech. The speaker says 'I have been to Italy three times'. You are snoozing a bit at this stage, so you don't catch how many times. You whisper to the person next to you in the audience: "What did he just say?", and your neighbour replies: "He said that he's been to Italy three times". That is a perfectly normal sentence, both in a formal or informal sense. We use the present perfect as it is true in the present, and in this case it has only just been said.
Chainy (Montri la profilon) 2011-septembro-27 13:09:07
sudanglo:One of them is particularly interesting with regard to the argument that a Present Perfect is justified in reported speech to emphasise the currency of the situation.There you go, you have explained yourself why that which you claim to be ungrammatical is actually perfectly fine. The present perfect is used to emphasise the currency of the situation. That's a very good way of explaining it.
sudanglo:All that can be reasonably reported is that the number of items returned was 5000 at the time of the interview. Whether this figure still applies at the time of publication of the report wouldn't be known.You're analysing this far too much. Of course anything can change between the moment of writing and the point of going to press or being read. But that's irrelevant. The author is highlighting the freshness of the information. Quibbling over the accuracy of this does not make any sense at all.
sudanglo (Montri la profilon) 2011-septembro-27 17:51:57
This is a grammatical fact which can be found in any book for learners of English (check out Murphy's, for example).Really, Chainy. I didn't find it documented in Murphy's English Grammar in Use - nor in Swan's Practical English Usage. Perhaps you could give the exact reference.
However, what I saw in Swan did suggest a sentence which I might find convincing (as, perhaps, is your Italy example).
The man on the TV said that birds have been around since the time of the dinosaurs
Change 'birds' here to some more obscure animal group whose current existence might be doubted by the hearer and 'had' might give the wrong idea.
What is in Murphy's English Grammar in Use is that the Present Simple may be sometimes used in reported speech. But that isn't the issue, and, to boot, I gave an example of this earlier in the thread.
By the way, since '-is' in Esperanto can function either as English's Simple Past or as its Present Perfect, it seems quite legitimate to add the 'tiam' to force the meaning of the Past Simple - which implies a THEN in English.