English Grammar 101 - specific & general
May 28, 2022 11:40 AM Subscribe
What tense is this sentence: "He could not make himself join Dr. Walsh at the illuminator, would not look at the cross-section of his skull." Also: can you recommend a general introduction to US English grammar?
My high school son often has grammar questions for me. While I have a good ear for grammar, I do not know the names of various grammatical constructions. So, two questions:
What is the tense of that sentence? We believe it's present tense, but want to make sure we're not missing something. (Modal Verbs and Modality appears to be relevant.)
Can you recommend a general introduction to US English grammar? This is the sort of book my son might actually read, enjoy, and benefit from. I don't think he's ever learned grammar and things like sentence diagramming in school.
My high school son often has grammar questions for me. While I have a good ear for grammar, I do not know the names of various grammatical constructions. So, two questions:
What is the tense of that sentence? We believe it's present tense, but want to make sure we're not missing something. (Modal Verbs and Modality appears to be relevant.)
Can you recommend a general introduction to US English grammar? This is the sort of book my son might actually read, enjoy, and benefit from. I don't think he's ever learned grammar and things like sentence diagramming in school.
I'm not a grammar person (iamkimiam maybe could answer this?) but "would" and "could" get used in place of "will" and "can" when you're talking about someone besides yourself. So I would call this something like "present tense, reported speech."
To abuse the edit window, dfan is probably correct in that this scenario took place in the past, though I've read books in which it would be clear this was an ongoing situation. If you can replace the word with another one that's more clearly regular old past tense it would make it clearer. "He refused to make himself..."
Honestly, everything I learned about English grammar I learned while studying another language. In order to translate things back and forth, one ends up having to learn about one's own language.
posted by small_ruminant at 11:58 AM on May 28, 2022
To abuse the edit window, dfan is probably correct in that this scenario took place in the past, though I've read books in which it would be clear this was an ongoing situation. If you can replace the word with another one that's more clearly regular old past tense it would make it clearer. "He refused to make himself..."
Honestly, everything I learned about English grammar I learned while studying another language. In order to translate things back and forth, one ends up having to learn about one's own language.
posted by small_ruminant at 11:58 AM on May 28, 2022
Not a grammar nerd or an expert in any way. But, "present" is what I'd expect. "Conditional" might be another option, especially in the context of other languages, but probably not if they've not talked about it in class specifically.
posted by eotvos at 12:11 PM on May 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by eotvos at 12:11 PM on May 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
I'm fascinated that people are reading this as present tense. Can you give a broader context for the sentence that would make that work?
Without any other context, it's the past simple. "Yesterday, Bobby came to work. But he could not make himself join Dr. Walsh at the illuminator, would not look at the cross-section of his skull."
With the addition of a conditional clause, it could be the present conditional: "Bobby finds his job disgusting. There are parts of it he just can't do. Why, he couldn't make himself join Dr. Walsh at the illuminator if his life depended on it. He would not look at the cross-section of his skull even if it were the last skull on Earth."
Whether the present conditional is a mood or a tense depends on who you ask.
posted by trig at 12:14 PM on May 28, 2022 [6 favorites]
Without any other context, it's the past simple. "Yesterday, Bobby came to work. But he could not make himself join Dr. Walsh at the illuminator, would not look at the cross-section of his skull."
With the addition of a conditional clause, it could be the present conditional: "Bobby finds his job disgusting. There are parts of it he just can't do. Why, he couldn't make himself join Dr. Walsh at the illuminator if his life depended on it. He would not look at the cross-section of his skull even if it were the last skull on Earth."
Whether the present conditional is a mood or a tense depends on who you ask.
posted by trig at 12:14 PM on May 28, 2022 [6 favorites]
But your example sentence is clearly taking place in the past (you can verify this by making up sentences that might plausibly go before and after it).
No need to make up sentences! The original sentence is in 10:04: A Novel, and the surrounding passage is in past tense narration, so there you go.
FWIW, "could" and "would" are modal auxiliaries here, which take an infinitive complement (the verbs "make" and "look"). So you can't tell tense from the inflection of the verb alone, because there isn't any.
posted by aws17576 at 12:15 PM on May 28, 2022 [13 favorites]
No need to make up sentences! The original sentence is in 10:04: A Novel, and the surrounding passage is in past tense narration, so there you go.
FWIW, "could" and "would" are modal auxiliaries here, which take an infinitive complement (the verbs "make" and "look"). So you can't tell tense from the inflection of the verb alone, because there isn't any.
posted by aws17576 at 12:15 PM on May 28, 2022 [13 favorites]
I recommend Diana Hacker's A Writer's Reference frequently to my copyediting/proofreading clients who want to learn more. It's easy to read, fairly comprehensive yet not overly long or complicated, and if you can get an older edition, they were comb-bound with easy tabs to find things with. It also features some ESL information about trouble spots that I have found enormously helpful for people coming at grammar completely cold, because English is just a whacky language. But I have no idea what's going on with prices--it looks like more recent editions are almost a hundred dollars or something, but I can't tell what the digital editions are like.
posted by kitten kaboodle at 12:20 PM on May 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by kitten kaboodle at 12:20 PM on May 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
For your second question: When I was in high school (late last century), most English comp classes used Warriner's English Grammar and Composition and Strunk & White's The Elements of Style. I can't say I enjoyed them, exactly (although I've come to appreciate S&W as a adult who gets paid to write), but I do remember Warriner's providing pretty clear explanations for "why we say/ write it this way." I think I still have my copy on a shelf around here somewhere.
A few years ago I bought Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog because I felt like diagramming sentences never clicked for me as a kid and I heard good things about the book on NPR, but I'll confess I haven't read it yet - maybe someone else can vouch for its value.
posted by Sweetie Darling at 12:21 PM on May 28, 2022 [3 favorites]
A few years ago I bought Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog because I felt like diagramming sentences never clicked for me as a kid and I heard good things about the book on NPR, but I'll confess I haven't read it yet - maybe someone else can vouch for its value.
posted by Sweetie Darling at 12:21 PM on May 28, 2022 [3 favorites]
By the way, while it isn't exactly what you asked for, I wonder if your son would enjoy learning about linguistics! There's a ton of great stuff for his age on Gretchen McCulloch's site All Things Linguistic.
(At your son's age, I was interested in grammar too, but it turned out that was just how love of language in general got its foot in the door.)
posted by aws17576 at 12:26 PM on May 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
(At your son's age, I was interested in grammar too, but it turned out that was just how love of language in general got its foot in the door.)
posted by aws17576 at 12:26 PM on May 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
Any chance your son is learning any languages at school? Studying another language's grammar can be very effective for this, because most textbooks will compare the other language's grammar to English. If he's learning a closely-related language like Spanish (or pretty much any Indo-European language) he'll end up covering a lot of the same structures that English has.
Other than that, I'd recommend looking at some EFL books and having him pick one that clicks with him.
posted by trig at 12:28 PM on May 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
Other than that, I'd recommend looking at some EFL books and having him pick one that clicks with him.
posted by trig at 12:28 PM on May 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
This is less of a breezy introduction, and more of a reference work, but The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language is a standard reference work. I would recommend it if either of you develop a serious interest in grammar, but not if you just want to read something over the weekend.
There is often a gap (in accuracy, complexity, etc) between grammars written for writers/students/etc and grammars written to be linguistically accurate, even though there is also a significant overlap in content. A linguist's idea of "sentence diagramming," for example, is probably going to be pretty different than what most people think of.
I strongly recommend against Strunk & White. It's not a grammar introduction, but a style guide, and it is notoriously full of both inaccurate grammar information and bad style advice.
More generally, distinguishing between style guides and and grammatical description is important for figuring out what you want here. Style guides usually focus on "problems" that people run into; it's not their job to give comprehensive/detailed grammar information except when it's necessary to explain why one usage is preferred over another. (Even then, they often muck it up.) Grammars aimed at people learning English tend to do better, since they have to explain the grammar from the ground up. Reference grammars (like the one I linked) are the absolute best in terms of accurate information, but might be too much for a casual reader.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 1:12 PM on May 28, 2022 [4 favorites]
There is often a gap (in accuracy, complexity, etc) between grammars written for writers/students/etc and grammars written to be linguistically accurate, even though there is also a significant overlap in content. A linguist's idea of "sentence diagramming," for example, is probably going to be pretty different than what most people think of.
I strongly recommend against Strunk & White. It's not a grammar introduction, but a style guide, and it is notoriously full of both inaccurate grammar information and bad style advice.
More generally, distinguishing between style guides and and grammatical description is important for figuring out what you want here. Style guides usually focus on "problems" that people run into; it's not their job to give comprehensive/detailed grammar information except when it's necessary to explain why one usage is preferred over another. (Even then, they often muck it up.) Grammars aimed at people learning English tend to do better, since they have to explain the grammar from the ground up. Reference grammars (like the one I linked) are the absolute best in terms of accurate information, but might be too much for a casual reader.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 1:12 PM on May 28, 2022 [4 favorites]
Your example manages to touch lots of difficulties in grammatical terminology and English grammar!
A lot of our terms come from Latin and Greek and work much better there. E.g. Latin verbal inflections can be neatly divided into "tense" (= time, past/present/future) and "mood" (indicative vs. subjunctive). The Romance languages went and created a "conditional" (e.g. French je regarderais "I would look at"), which is sometimes called a tense— leading to people using "tense" for just about any verbal construction.
English relies very heavily on auxiliary verbs— note that we've got two or more verbs in phrases like "I will look", "I had looked", "I would look", "I can look", "I could have looked", "I am looking", etc. If we were Martians we'd probably stick with "auxiliary" for all of these, but by analogy with Romance languages people talk about (say) "I will look" as future tense, "I would look (if I could)" as conditional, etc.
Can/will/may/shall/must are auxiliaries that can be grouped together as modals (related to "mood"). In older English these were present tense, and could/would/might/should were their past tenses. ("Must" doesn't change in the past.) You can still verify this by changing the time of a sentence: "Today I can swim. Yesterday I couldn't." But we can also use could/would/might/should as independent, present-tense modals, with various meanings.
All that is background to the answer to your question, which is that your sentences have modal verbs, and we can't tell the tense (past/present) till we know the context.
I would echo Kutsuwamushi's warning that style guides can be misleading and/or outdated. I'd also add, don't get too hung up on the terms— we have to call things something, and often we do so for historical reasons that are confusing if you take them too seriously. Plus, languages just insist on stretching their constructions— e.g. "I fell in love" is past tense in form, but "If I fell in love with you, would you promise to be true" doesn't refer to the past.
posted by zompist at 5:15 PM on May 28, 2022 [6 favorites]
A lot of our terms come from Latin and Greek and work much better there. E.g. Latin verbal inflections can be neatly divided into "tense" (= time, past/present/future) and "mood" (indicative vs. subjunctive). The Romance languages went and created a "conditional" (e.g. French je regarderais "I would look at"), which is sometimes called a tense— leading to people using "tense" for just about any verbal construction.
English relies very heavily on auxiliary verbs— note that we've got two or more verbs in phrases like "I will look", "I had looked", "I would look", "I can look", "I could have looked", "I am looking", etc. If we were Martians we'd probably stick with "auxiliary" for all of these, but by analogy with Romance languages people talk about (say) "I will look" as future tense, "I would look (if I could)" as conditional, etc.
Can/will/may/shall/must are auxiliaries that can be grouped together as modals (related to "mood"). In older English these were present tense, and could/would/might/should were their past tenses. ("Must" doesn't change in the past.) You can still verify this by changing the time of a sentence: "Today I can swim. Yesterday I couldn't." But we can also use could/would/might/should as independent, present-tense modals, with various meanings.
All that is background to the answer to your question, which is that your sentences have modal verbs, and we can't tell the tense (past/present) till we know the context.
I would echo Kutsuwamushi's warning that style guides can be misleading and/or outdated. I'd also add, don't get too hung up on the terms— we have to call things something, and often we do so for historical reasons that are confusing if you take them too seriously. Plus, languages just insist on stretching their constructions— e.g. "I fell in love" is past tense in form, but "If I fell in love with you, would you promise to be true" doesn't refer to the past.
posted by zompist at 5:15 PM on May 28, 2022 [6 favorites]
"If I fell in love with you, would you promise to be true" doesn't refer to the past.
It refers to a past, though. The promise being asked about is an event that's part of a hypothetical future that depends upon the falling in love having already happened, by which time it would be in the past.
I seem to recall Douglas Adams writing that English would need many more tenses to be able to deal adequately with time travel. The thing about that, though, is that even though we only ever get to travel one way in time, our languages and the stories we construct with them can time-hop with much more freedom - exactly because we can construct imaginary scenarios that have absolutely any timewise relationship with ourselves and/or each other that we want them to.
posted by flabdablet at 4:45 AM on May 29, 2022 [1 favorite]
It refers to a past, though. The promise being asked about is an event that's part of a hypothetical future that depends upon the falling in love having already happened, by which time it would be in the past.
I seem to recall Douglas Adams writing that English would need many more tenses to be able to deal adequately with time travel. The thing about that, though, is that even though we only ever get to travel one way in time, our languages and the stories we construct with them can time-hop with much more freedom - exactly because we can construct imaginary scenarios that have absolutely any timewise relationship with ourselves and/or each other that we want them to.
posted by flabdablet at 4:45 AM on May 29, 2022 [1 favorite]
I have a book suggestion!
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage is so much fun!
posted by danabanana at 3:53 PM on May 29, 2022
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage is so much fun!
posted by danabanana at 3:53 PM on May 29, 2022
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It's a little confusing because "could" and "would" can also be used in present-tense sentences, like "I could really go for a slice of pie right now." But your example sentence is clearly taking place in the past (you can verify this by making up sentences that might plausibly go before and after it).
posted by dfan at 11:58 AM on May 28, 2022 [7 favorites]