• Tenses... 2.

    From Ardith Hinton@1:153/716 to Anton Shepelev on Thu Jun 4 21:42:50 2020
    Hi again, Anton! This is a continuation of my previous message to you:

    Addison in a psalm of his addresses God:

    I knew thou wert not slow to hear,
    Nor impotent to save.

    I don't think that substituting `art' for `wert' would
    harm the sound and rythm so much as to justify `wert',
    were it ungrammatical...


    No. But I think you're referring to Joseph Addison, who lived from 1672-1719 & who wrote at least two hymns based on a rewording of Old Testament psalms. Bishop R. Heber said "... which wert, and art, and evermore shalt be" WRT God in 1827. I'm not sure how much to attribute to liturgical anachronism
    ... as Fowler puts it... or how much weight to assign to the idea that when we speak of an immutable truth the verb tenses should still be in agreement. :-)



    We've often had people say to us, in casual conversation,
    "I didn't know you're a teacher." I doubt they are the
    only people who do this.... :-)

    Hardly so, but such is the nature of causual conversation
    that one has little time, and even less desire, to ensure
    grammatical accuracy.


    Agreed. When folks are speaking extemporaneously they tend to make grammatical errors they probably wouldn't have made if they'd had more time to think about the wording. In an otherwise fruitless search of my own reference books, however, I found this description of something else: "well established but controversial". I think the same might also be said of the above.... ;-)




    --- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+
    * Origin: Wits' End, Vancouver CANADA (1:153/716)