ESL General English Grammar Questions

Re: past continuous / past perfect

paco2004 — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 03:08:42 GMT

MrPedantic wrote:

1. While I was writing an e-mail to my e-friend, I noticed that I had misspelt some words.

â this seems to me the standard version: the "noticing" follows the "misspelling", and both take place during the "writing".

2. While I was writing an e-mail to my e-friend, I noticed that I misspelt some words.

â this sounds a little strange to me: the "noticing" seems to coincide with the "misspelling", as if you were describing the experience of noticing mistakes at the very moment of making them.

(But it may be that an AmE speaker would read #2 differently from me.)

MrP

Hurmâ¦. I should correct my view on English speakers' punctuality about the time sequence relations.

Googlily
"Somebody found someone had made a mistake" 21,200
"Somebody found someone made a mistake" 378

paco

Re: past continuous / past perfect

MrPedantic — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 02:09:20 GMT

1. While I was writing an e-mail to my e-friend, I noticed that I had misspelt some words.

â this seems to me the standard version: the "noticing" follows the "misspelling", and both take place during the "writing".

2. While I was writing an e-mail to my e-friend, I noticed that I misspelt some words.

â this sounds a little strange to me: the "noticing" seems to coincide with the "misspelling", as if you were describing the experience of noticing mistakes at the very moment of making them.

(But it may be that an AmE speaker would read #2 differently from me.)

MrP

Re: past continuous / past perfect

Goodman — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 01:58:01 GMT

100% agreed. a simple past tense to describe "misspelled" and "noticed" is perfectly acceptable in daily life.

Re: past continuous / past perfect

paco2004 — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 01:21:11 GMT

Hello again

The following is my humble thought.

What I'd like to say at first is:
"While I was writing an e-mail", when it comes before the main clause, modifies wholeof the main clause "I noticed I misspelled some words". More specifically, the while-clause modifies the main statement "I noticed". On the other hand, in the case of "I noticed I misspelled some words when I was writing an e-mail", the syntactic status of the while-clause is ambiguous. The sentence could be interpreted both as "(I noticed) (I misspelled some words when I was writing an e-mail)" and as "(I noticed I misspelled some words) (when I was writing an e-mail)".

As for the choice between "I misspelled" and "I had misspelled", "I had misspelled" is scientifically more correct, because the event "I misspell" clearly should happen in a time prior to the time the event "I notice it" happens. But because of this very unobjectionable relation in time sequence of the two events, the use of "I had misspelled" sounds a bit too much correct when it is spoken in everyday speech.

paco

Re: past continuous / past perfect

Diamondrg — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 20:55:14 GMT

What would your take be if the sentence was:

- While I was writing an e-mail to my e-friend, I noticed that I misspelt some words.

Re: past continuous / past perfect

Goodman — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 19:44:13 GMT

My pleasure!

Re: past continuous / past perfect

Diamondrg — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 19:27:28 GMT

thank you, Goodman.

Re: past continuous / past perfect

Goodman — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 18:48:49 GMT

Diamondrg wrote:

To me, it is really weard to relate the two, but sometimes it is being mind-boggliing. Now I want to ask whether past perfect can be in the past continuous. For example:

- While I was writing an e-mail to my e-friend, I noticed that I had misspelt some words.

Here I think "had misspelt" happened during "was writing", but still it seems strange to me.

Am I mistaken?

Hello,

This is my take.

While I was writing an e-mail to my e-friend, I noticed that I had misspelled some words. â This is a perfectly fine sentence.

During the writing of the e-mail, 3 events wwere taking place with one happened before the others.

1 ) [ writing the e-mail >-------------------------------------------------------------] â whole duration

2) [ writing in process ------>(misspelled words--------)----------------------------] â words were misspelled during the e-mail which had started before you realized.

3) [ Writing in process ----->( misspelled words-------)-------->( discovered misspelled words)] â so itâs correct to use past perfect tense for the misspelled words .

past continuous / past perfect

Diamondrg — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 17:53:31 GMT

To me, it is really weard to relate the two, but sometimes it is being mind-boggliing. Now I want to ask whether past perfect can be in the past continuous. For example:

- While I was writing an e-mail to my e-friend, I noticed that I had misspelt some words.

Here I think "had misspelt" happened during "was writing", but still it seems strange to me.

Am I mistaken?