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English translation: The first 2 verbs, "hit" and "stop", should be past perfect, the others should be past tense.
19:47 Feb 20, 2021
English language (monolingual) [PRO] Art/Literary - Poetry & Literature
English term or phrase:Simple Past or Past Perfect
Which tense is more appropriate in the paragraph below? On one hand, John remembers the events that happened before a certain moment in the past, i.e. he first hit the vehicle and then remembered it and all the following events, which calls for Past Perfect. On the other hand, the sequence of events is clear, which means that Simple Past will work too. Any comments/suggestions? Thank you!
John looked at his car. The car wasn’t drivable. He remembered the moment he (had) hit the other vehicle very well. He remembered the blue sedan that (had) stopped abruptly in the middle of the road. There was (had been) no time to hit the brakes. His life (had) flashed before his eyes. His car (had) rear-ended the blue sedan and the airbags (had) deployed. John looked at the wrecked car again, shook his head and decided to walk home.
Explanation: For the first 2 verbs, "hit" and "stop", there is a comparison of time sequence with the verb "remember" in the same sentence. The other verbs don't have. So, it should be:
John looked at his car. The car wasn’t drivable. He remembered the moment he had hit the other vehicle very well. He remembered the blue sedan that had stopped abruptly in the middle of the road. There was no time to hit the brakes. His life flashed before his eyes. His car rear-ended the blue sedan and the airbags deployed. John looked at the wrecked car again, shook his head and decided to walk home.
I would like to thank everybody for their input/comments. Special thanks to Oliver Simões for the link to Jami Gold's site. 4 KudoZ points were awarded for this answer
You're very welcome. It was a pleasure. I want to learn more about Jami Gold's literature. I love to read authors who think out of the box. And that goes for grammar too. (Did I miss a comma? :-)
1.2 Number of native and non-native English speakers There are 378 million native speakers (those who speak English as their first language) and 743 million non-native speakers (those who speak English as their second language) in the world.
Looks like we are wasting our breath. A non-native speaker asks a question in a monolingual English forum and prefers the (incorrect) advice of other non-natives rather than those of us who actually teach English. So, just ignore grammar rules and renowned style guides such as the Chicago Manual of Style. Says it all really about what Kudoz has become :- ((
'The ambulance had come. The police had also come and [not necessary to repeat the auxiliary verb here] made a report. The other driver had been taken to the hospital...'.
By the way, in English, the ellipsis consists of three dots, not five.
FWIW: I was born in Kent (S.E. England), I went to primary school in what had been Charles Dickens' old home (Gad's Hill, an independent school since 1924) , I've taught EFL for over 20 years and I have a licentiate (5-year) degree in English Philology.
John looked at his car. The car wasn’t drivable. He remembered the moment he had hit/hit the other vehicle very well. He remembered the blue sedan that had stopped abruptly in the middle of the road. There had been no time to hit the brakes. His life had flashed before his eyes. His car had rear-ended the blue sedan and the airbags had deployed. John looked at the wrecked car again, shook his head and decided to walk home.
The first verb, hit, can be either simple past or past perfect, depending on how vivid you want to imply the memory is - technically it happened prior to ‘he looked at the car’, so should be past perfect, but simple past gives a sense of remembering it vividly in that moment. However, all the other events take place prior to that first one (the hit), so they have to be in the past perfect. The only other option would be the gerund, which would give the sense of him reliving the moment, eg He remembered the blue sedan stopping abruptly...
My initial reaction to the paragraph was that it might actually be an EFL grammar exercise from a school assignment or book. If this is the case, then we can state with certainty that Yvonne's answers are definitely the best ones for such a context since such exercises are designed to help one recognize the differences between the relevant tenses. Otherwise, the text could benefit from some rewriting since the "choppiness" of it is not particularly natural, and I don't think that (incorrectly) using the simple past is an effective remedy for this problem. Perhaps the Asker could provide more information about the text and help put any debate to rest.
@ Arabic & More Thank you! Yes, of course this could be written more smoothly. In fact I find these short sentences or "telegraphic style rather odd in the circumstances. Following the verb "(he) remembered" I'd have expected a more stream-of-consciousness style to mimic remembering such as: He remembered well the moment he'd hit the other vehicle, the blue sedan stopped abruptly in the middle of the road, so there'd been no time to hit the brakes. His life had flashed before his eyes as his car had rear-ended the blue sedan and the airbags had deployed... Note also that some "had"s would become "'d"
I agree with Yvonne's response but would also point out that the paragraph provides some opportunities to combine sentences for a smoother read, which may also change the tenses in some cases. For example:
John looked at his car. The car wasn’t drivable. Could become: John looked at his car and realized that it wasn't drivable. (same tenses but less choppy)
His life had flashed before his eyes. His car had rear-ended the blue sedan and the airbags had deployed. Could become: His life had flashed before his eyes as his car rear-ended the blue sedan and the airbags deployed. (overall sentence still in PP but second and third verbs changed to sound more natural)
"After her hostile takeover of LexCorp—er, after a decade of writing boring technical manuals and project plans, Jami Gold decided to become a novelist. That way she could put her talent for making up stuff to good use, including winning the 2015 National Readers’ Choice Award in Paranormal Romance for the novel Ironclad Devotion in her Mythos Legacy series."
I suggest you all read Jami Gold's article "Beyond the Past: Understanding the Past Perfect Tense". If you are in a hurry, skip to the "Do We Have Too Many Hads in Our Writing?" section and focus on Tip no. 3.
Thank you, Jami, for bringing some common sense to the debate.
The first 2 verbs, "hit" and "stop", should be past perfect, the others should be past tense.
Explanation: For the first 2 verbs, "hit" and "stop", there is a comparison of time sequence with the verb "remember" in the same sentence. The other verbs don't have. So, it should be:
John looked at his car. The car wasn’t drivable. He remembered the moment he had hit the other vehicle very well. He remembered the blue sedan that had stopped abruptly in the middle of the road. There was no time to hit the brakes. His life flashed before his eyes. His car rear-ended the blue sedan and the airbags deployed. John looked at the wrecked car again, shook his head and decided to walk home.
Kiet Bach United States Local time: 16:17 Native speaker of: Chinese PRO pts in category: 4
Grading comment
I would like to thank everybody for their input/comments. Special thanks to Oliver Simões for the link to Jami Gold's site.
peer agreement (net): +3