The Grammar of English Grammars eBook

Goold Brown
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 4,149 pages of information about The Grammar of English Grammars.

The Grammar of English Grammars eBook

Goold Brown
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 4,149 pages of information about The Grammar of English Grammars.

OBS. 8.—­Now all the compound participles which begin with having are essentially alike; and, as a class of terms, they ought to have a name adapted to their nature, and expressive of their leading characteristic. Having loved differs from the simple participle loved, in signification as well as in form; and, if this participle is to be named with reference to its meaning, there is no more suitable term for it than the epithet PREPERFECT,—­a word which explains itself, like prepaid or prerequisite.  Of the many other names, the most correct one is PLUPERFECT,—­which is a term of very nearly the same meaning.  Not because this compound is really of the pluperfect tense, but because it always denotes being, action, or passion, that is, or was, or will be, completed before the doing or being of something else; and, of course, when the latter thing is represented as past, the participle must correspond to the pluperfect tense of its verb; as, “Having explained her views, it was necessary she should expatiate on the vanity and futility of the enjoyments promised by Pleasure.”—­Jamieson’s Rhet., p. 181.  Here having explained is exactly equivalent to when she had explained.  Again:  “I may say, He had commanded, and we obeyed; or, He having commanded, we obeyed.”—­Fetch’s Comprehensive Gram., p. ix.  Here the two phrases in Italics correspond in import, though not in construction.

OBS. 9.—­Pluperfect is a derivative contracted from the Latin plusquam-perfectum, and literally signifies more than complete, or beyond the perfect; i. e., (as confirmed by use,) antecedently finished, or completed before.  It is the usual name of our fourth tense; is likewise applicable to a corresponding tense in other tongues; and is a word familiar to every scholar.  Yet several grammarians,—­too ready, perhaps, for innovation,—­have shown their willingness to discard it altogether.  Bullions, Butler, Hiley, Perley, Wells, and some others, call the English pluperfect tense, the past-perfect, and understand either epithet to mean—­“completed at or before a certain past time;” (Bullions’s E. Gram., p. 39;) that is—­“finished or past, at some past time.”—­Butler’s Pract.  Gram., p. 72.  The relation of the tense is before the past, but the epithet pluperfect is not necessarily limited to this relation, any more than what is perfect is necessarily past.  Butler has urged, that, “Pluperfect does not mean completed before,” but is only “a technical name of a particular tense;” and, arguing from this erroneous assumption, has convinced himself, “It would be as correct to call this the second future participle, as the pluperfect.”—­Ib., p. 79.  The technical name, as limited to the past, is preterpluperfect, from the older term praeteritum

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