“Max Miller: What Before Means. The Communicative Contribution Of The English Pluperfect.” in “Max MILLER: What BEFORE Means. The Communicative Contribution Of The English Pluperfect”
What BEFORE Means: The Communicative Contribution
of the English Pluperfect
Max Miller
The traditional “pluperfect” tense of English, as in had eaten, has been hypothesized to signal the meaning PAST, BEFORE Time (Diver 1984, Huffman 1989). That is, an event signaled withthis form is placed on the timeline before another time, itself in the past, which serves as a reference point. However, in texts and discourse, events which exhibit this time ordering are often signaled with the “simple” PAST tense (e.g. ate), which does not signal such ordering. The BEFORE aspect of the meaning PAST, BEFORE, on the other hand, establishes a relationship between the event and its reference point, a relationship that is not signaled by the simple PAST. We explore this factor in the choice of the two tenses. We advance the idea that when the meaning PAST, BEFORE is chosen, the relationship between the event and its reference point is given especial emphasis. This hypothesis is developed with data from John McPhee’s The Pine Barrens (1967) and other sources.
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