On 08/08/15 23:23, Paul Looney wrote:
In your last example:
"Mr. Rushworth _was returned_”
“was returned” (singular, past tense, passive)
I'm not sure if that is a passive, or an older form of the past perfect
(= had returned) ???
is correct (although a simple “returned” would have been more powerful). There
is no conditional, no “if”; as in your first example:
"to inquire if Mr. Wickham_were returned_,"
Haven’t had this much fun with the language in a long time…
On Aug 8, 2015, at 1:07 PM, Richmond <richmondmathew...@gmail.com> wrote:
On 08/08/15 22:56, Paul Looney wrote:
Richmond,
The key here is the “if” - which creates a conditional clause - which requires the
past plural of the verb (in this case “were”). This is similar to the “wenn"
clause in German (Deutsch) and the “ut” clause in Latin.
If I were able, I’d thank you in person for mentioning this.
Paul Looney
I'm not sure anent that:
"He had been visiting a friend in the neighbouring county, and that
friend having recently had his grounds laid out by an improver, Mr.
Rushworth _was returned_ with his head full of the subject, and very eager
to be improving his own place in the same way; and though not saying
much to the purpose, could talk of nothing else."
Jane Austen, "Mansfield Park"
Richmond.
On Aug 8, 2015, at 9:42 AM, Richmond <richmondmathew...@gmail.com> wrote:
Jane Austen [amongst others] uses an interesting type of grammatical
construction of this sort:
After breakfast, the girls walked to Meryton to inquire if Mr. Wickham
_were returned_, and to lament over his absence from the Netherfield ball.
Pride and Prejudice.
I would like to analyse a million word corpus that I have been granted access
to for this type of construction.
However, I don't want to find examples of only 'were returned', but all
examples of
were + infinitive / preterite / past participle
and, presumably for that I shall have to use wildcards . . .
OR ???
Richmond.
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