Logical Fallacies Nearer Home

Over breakfast that Monday, just when I was about to wrap up my series on the logical fallacies, my wife Leonor wagged the front page of her favorite newspaper at me and said: “Look at this headline at the very top of the paper. It says ‘State of public education: 1 doctor per 90,000 studes.’ I can’t say exactly what the problem is, but I think there’s something terribly wrong here.”

I stared at the headline and blinked: “‘State of public education: 1 doctor per 90,000 students’? Mmm... I think the headline-writer really meant ‘State of school health care: 1 doctor per 90,000 studes.’ The poor guy must have missed a lot of sleep. That there’s only one doctor per 90,000 students in the public schools certainly couldn’t be a measure of the state of public education. Literacy and quality of instruction perhaps, but doctors? That’s really weird!”

“So why do they make a headline like that?” Leonor asked. “Look, they must have been pretty convinced that they were correct. They even printed exactly the same headline on Page 2.”

“Well, in formal logic, that headline would be called a fallacy of irrelevance, which is better known by its Latin name of ignoratio elenchi, meaning ‘irrelevant conclusion.’ This type of fallacy tries to establish the truth of a proposition with arguments that support an entirely different conclusion.

“You mean the guys putting out this paper don’t know that? Don’t they teach formal logic in mass communication or journalism?”

“Of course they do! Formal logic is a college requirement, but sometimes, when mental fatigue sets in, even the best minds become susceptible to fallacies of irrelevance. The worst case is the non sequitur, another Latin term that literally means ‘it doesn’t follow.’ Non sequiturs are arguments that fail to establish a connection between their premises and their conclusion. And then, of course, there are the so-called verbal fallacies, those false conclusions people make when words are used improperly or ambiguously. That headline is, if I’m not mistaken, also a classic case of the verbal fallacy of abstraction. That’s the logical error of focusing on only one aspect of reality and then pronouncing it to be the whole truth.”

“Well, I’m sure the country’s Education officials can simply ask schools to teach logic better. It’s scary. If this newspaper can be this illogical right on the front page, I can’t imagine how it will be with the lesser ones.”

“It’s really scary, Leonor, but I’m not very sure if our Education officials will be of much help,” I said. “It looks like they have the same problem with English and logic—probably even worse. Just yesterday, while passing by their central offices along Meralco Avenue in Pasig, I saw a huge streamer and a big billboard of theirs that almost made my eyes pop out.”

“Why?” she asked, sipping her coffee. “What did the streamer and billboard say?”

“Well, the streamer on the front gate carried an Education department message in big, bold letters: ‘Join in the Observance of the Celebration of the 105th Anniversary of the Proclamation of the Philippine Independence Day.’ Those words exactly.”

 “You must be kidding! That sounds so wordy and so stilted and so convoluted to me, even if I’m not a grammarian like you. I would have simply said, ‘Let’s All Celebrate Our 105th Philippine Independence Day.’ But is that a fallacious statement?”

“No, just very bad English usage,” I said, “but it makes me wonder how they can enforce President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s directive to restore English as the country’s language of instruction. I think they have a language proficiency problem themselves.”

“Well, Dear, that’s just too bad, but that’s not your problem,” she said. “You have your own day job to worry about. So finish your coffee now. But wait, you haven’t told me yet what was in that billboard. What did it say?”

“Well, the billboard had something to do with iodized salt. It said that it was a joint project of the LGU, DEC, DOH, Kiwanis, Australian Aid, and UNICEF—the big guns in development, you might say. But you wouldn’t believe the slogan they had on that billboard. It said: ‘Be Intelligent. Use Iodized Salt Every Day.’”

“So what’s wrong with that? Seems to me like sensible nutritional advice.”

“My dear,” I chided her, “don’t you see? That slogan is actually a very serious verbal fallacy. It’s called the fallacy of equivocation. It uses the word ‘intelligent’ in more than one sense, yet gives the impression that only one is meant. The first fallacy is that you can make yourself intelligent simply by an act of will. The second is that using iodized salt every day will make you intelligent. They are a double non sequitur, a double absurdity. Both childish oversimplifications—and very dangerous.”

“I see what you mean. You’re right, and now that really scares me like hell!” (June 26, 2003)

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, June 26, 2003 issue, © 2003 by The Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Memos Pleasant and Unpleasant

In my line of work I am often asked how to write a good memo. By “good,” of course, I take it to mean that a memo that doesn’t bristle with anger, spite, or venom. That type of memo is the easiest thing to produce. All you have to do is settle down on your desk while your temples are still throbbing from some slight or simple injustice, imagine your perceived enemy to be a dragon or a monster and you are Sir George, and start clacking away on the computer keyboard or furiously scribbling with your ballpoint pen until the ink spatters on the copy paper. It’s really all that simple. You will feel good at the moment and the words will wonderfully flow like water from a newfound geyser.

            But I am usually more circumspect than that. I always assume that instead, you want the memo to be sensible. You want it to (a) state your case clearly, (b) help the addressee quickly reach a receptive frame of mind, (c) make the addressee think mostly of good things about you before he decides on your case or fire back a memo in retaliation, and (d) get you the results that you so fervently desire. Now, of course, this is not as simple as it sounds. Some corporate types have actually recognized how complex it is and have even made a whole science of it. They have termed it as the “two-way interactive communication feedback loop” or something. For me, though, I simply call it the art of making a memo.

                                             IMAGE CREDIT: THEHRDIGEST.COM*

            The first thing to do when writing a memo is not to be neurotic about your English. That will often strike you dead on your tracks or force you to retreat behind what the pros call “the writer’s block.” Let good English wait for later. Instead, start by clearly visualizing in your mind, whether in English or the vernacular, exactly who you are writing to. Figure out precisely what kind of person he or she is, what quirks he has, the men and women he likes around him, the club or bar he frequents. You have to intimately know what makes the guy or lady tick and what gets his or her goat. If he loves to have his “Dr.” out front before his name, or his Ph.D., ABC, or DVD at its tail end, give it to him. Depending on your point of view, you will be pleasantly surprised or profoundly shocked at how great the store they put on these things.

            Once, I heard a friend with a doctorate lament that the guy who addressed him in a memo forgot or deliberately omitted the “Dr.” before his full name. To add insult to injury, the guy also forgot or deliberately omitted the “S.” of his middle initials. My friend couldn’t get over the slight for days. He spent hours trying to figure out how to get back at his transgressor. His preparations for it became so intense that it assumed the proportions of a major commando raid. Finally, he was ready. He sat down and composed a memo to the transgressor. Licking his chops, he deliberately and triumphantly omitted not only the latter’s “Mr.” but also his first and middle initials as well as his “Jr.” Then, after positioning himself so that he could see the transgressor’s reaction at his cubicle a few meters away, he asked the office messenger to personally hand the memo to him right then and there. I leave it to you to imagine what happened next.

            So what is the moral of this story about memos and the corporate environment? It is that when writing a memo, you should never take anything for granted. Be conscious of both the verbals and nonverbals swirling around you. Learn to listen and feel your way around first before writing the memo. Take time to act. Your situation in the corporate, government, or military organization is like that of a cellular phone. You know that it has no wires but a thousand and one wavelengths of messages are impinging on it every second, wanting to get in but could not either because they are not for you or you do not wish to listen to them. But the frequencies are there whether you like it or not. Sometimes, by a fluke or by Divine Providence, a fugitive one manages to squeak through. Some people call it guilt. Some people call it hunch. Some people call it conscience. Some call it inspiration. Some people call it intuition. Some call it fate.

           Whatever its name, this fugitive frequency is the one that tells you to catch the writer of the dastardly memo in an unguarded moment—probably eating a ham sandwich or having coffee at the office canteen or whatever. Gently tap him or her on the shoulder, say “Hi!”, admit your mistake or transgression, and say you’re sorry. When you do this, he or she will likely smile at you and the two of you will begin to talk. Oh, just trifles, nothing of much consequence! You just fiddle on the ham sandwich and dawdle over your coffee. You simply remember your good times together and you both forget the bad. Funny that when you do this, you seem to reach a common mental state and a union of sorts. There must be something after all in this nonsense they call face-to-face communication. You become active partners in the corporate organization again.

            After the ham sandwich and the coffee, and the parting handshake after that, the corporation suddenly becomes a friendlier and a decidedly less dangerous place. And I will bet you that you may not have to write that memo after all.

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This essay was among Jose A. Carillo’s 158 earliest columns in The Manila Times that were chosen to form part of his first English-usage book, English Plain and Simple: No-Nonsense Ways To Learn Today’s Global Language (Manila Times Publishing, ©2004, 498 pages).The choice was based on general and lasting interest to English-language learners and enthusiasts.

*The image of the startled woman that illustrates this article appears in TheHRDigest webpage at https://www.thehrdigest.com/how-to-respond-to-a-rude-email/.

The Pause That Refreshes

Many years ago, flying by happenstance with the late Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr. and a leading Defense official* on board the former’s private twin-engine aircraft from Vigan to Manila, I witnessed at close range what I would call a person with a gift for plain talk rather than oratory. At that time, then Ilocos Sur Gov. Luis “Chavit” Singson lay bloodied in a hospital in Vigan, a victim of two grenade blasts that marred a fiesta dance in Cabugao the night before, claiming the lives of eight merrymakers. Sen. Aquino and the Defense official had flown in to tour the scene of the carnage and to visit Gov. Singson, and as a newspaper reporter I followed their every move and took note of every little word they said. I myself had come in from Manila on board my newspaper’s plane, but stayed behind when it became apparent that the bombing tragedy was far worse than the initial news agency dispatch had indicated. So when Sen. Aquino’s Cabugao swing was over, I found myself boarding his plane like it was the most natural thing in the world, thus giving me a vantage point for observing how his mind and language worked.

Apart from his obvious intelligence, what struck me most about Sen. Aquino was his being a nonstop talker who could shift effortlessly from English to Tagalog and vice versa. He was every bit like a munitions expert as he talked about grenades, glibly describing its various types and how each would inflict damage on flesh, and it was amusing that the Defense official, who was his main audience, could only gamely butt in with remarks like “Ganon ba ’yun, pare?” while the senator rattled off facts and figures until we landed at Nichols Airbase.** The wonder of it all was that his talk made complete sense with hardly any comma or period. The only thing you could fault him with was that he spoke a virtual monologue; there simply was no way anybody can get a word in, short of perhaps telling him that the plane was on fire or had run out of aviation fuel. Unlike his political archenemy, then President Ferdinand Marcos, a great talker himself but actually a slurrer with frequent “uhmms” and “ehmms,” Sen. Aquino was not —and hardly made any “ahs” either. He was a perfectly fluent fireside-chat charmer, one who could pedantically lecture you and yet make you feel that he was wooing you. To my mind, he had actually mastered the art of speaking in the same way that Ernest Hemingway had mastered writing, weaving tales and prose with fascinating precision, giving the deceptive feeling that there was really no need for commas and periods—only natural breathing pauses—in this world.

To do what Sen. Aquino could do with speech and Hemingway with prose, or to imitate James Joyce by banishing all punctuations altogether (as in his novel Ulysses), requires at the very least a small touch of linguistic genius. That, however, is something not all of us are fortunate to claim, much less to have. Thus, when we write or talk, we have to mind at all times our punctuation marks, using them with precision so that we can get ourselves clearly understood and avoid lapsing into incoherence. To use the advertising catch phrase of a popular softdrink brand long ago, we have to provide our readers or listeners with “the pause that refreshes,” one that periodically restores the mind’s capacity to absorb what we are drilling into it.

Among the very first things we have to do with our English, therefore, is to master its major punctuations: the period, or what the British call the “full stop,” and the comma. Periods should not be a problem at all. They are, as you know, mainly used to mark the end of sentences as complete statements, as the ending dot in the “The world is an apple.” They are, of course, also used to mark abbreviations, as in “Ph.D.” for Doctor of Philosophy, “Brit.” for British, and “Ford Co.” for Ford Company. The only caveat we should remember is not to write the period twice when the abbreviation occurs at the very end of a sentence, as in “There is doubt about the English of our teachers in the English Dept.” Not a very well-bred way to close, but perfectly okay as punctuation goes.

The comma, on the other hand, is a somewhat more complicated linguistic creature. It has more specialized uses than the period, and the choice to use it involves more than just a stylistic decision. A sentence is either correct or wrong without it. At one extreme in the use of commas is the license taken by certain poets in overusing them, as in Jose Garcia Villa’s poem, “Anchored Angel":

And,lay,he,down,the,golden,father,

(Genesis,fist,all,gentle,now).

between, the, Wall, of,China,and,

The,tiger,tree (his, centuries,his,

Aerials,of,light)…

Anchored,entire,angel!

He,in,his,estate,miracle,and, living,dew,

His,fuses,gold,his,cobalts,love,

And,in,his,eyepits,

O,under,the,liontelling, sun,

The,zeta,truth-the,swift,red,Christ.

At the other extreme, of course, is the extremely sparing use of it, which could be as downright confusing if you are not as articulate as a Sen. Aquino or as artful as a Hemingway.

We obviously cannot afford to take liberties with commas then, so we will confine ourselves to their more conventional uses. Here they are: (a) To indicate where to pause in reading a text to make the meaning clear and unambiguous, as in: “I believe in his intelligence, integrity, and honesty.” (b) To set apart multiple adjectives before a noun, except when the final adjectives form a compound with the noun itself, as in: “Jennifer was a tall, fair, and attractive Filipina advertising executive.” (c) To separate a non-defining relative clause from its antecedent, as in: “My friend Alberto, who had his visa interview only last week, is now scheduled to fly to New York for a plum advertising job.” (d) To allow for parenthetic expressions within sentences, as in: “To see more of Europe, unless pressed for time, tour it leisurely by backpacking.” (e) To separate items in a list, especially shorter ones, as in: “The annual summit took up the following urgent global issues: famine in undeveloped countries, pollution, water scarcity, and ozone layer depletion.” and (f) To mark off and make it easier to read large numbers such as hundreds, thousands, and millions, as in: “The price tag of $12,820,422 for a yacht is mind-boggling any way you look at it.”

This, in a nutshell, is really all there is to know about English commas. (Written circa 2003-2004) 

This essay first appeared in the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times and subsequently appeared as Chapter 50 in the English Grammar Revisited section of his book English Plain and Simple: No-Nonsense Ways to Learn Today’s Global Language, © 2004 by Jose A. Carillo, © 2008 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

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*This official was unnamed in the original appearance of this essay and the author felt that for authenticity’s sake, it’s better to keep it that way.

**Renamed in 1982 as the Jesus Villamor Air Base.

NB. Former Sen. Benigno Aquino III, returning to the Philippines after three years of self-exile in the United States, was gunned down by an assassin and died upon arrival at the Manila International Airport on August 21, 1983.

The perfect infinitive and perfect gerund forms and their usage

Two important grammatical forms that I don’t recall having ever taken up at length here in the Forum are the perfect infinitive and the perfect gerund. I was asked about their usage sometime in 2011 but having been so pressed for time when I wrote my reply, I only managed to come up in the Forum with what looks to me now as a bare-bones discussion of the two forms, and of just two of their particular applications at that. To make up for that less than adequate treatment, I will now discuss the perfect infinitive and the perfect gerund more comprehensively this time.

The form and uses of the perfect infinitive

Let’s take up the perfect infinitive first.

The perfect infinitive has this form: “to have + the past participle or ‘-ed’ form of the verb,” as in the sentence “She declared with great fervor to have met all the qualifications required of presidential candidates, but that declaration has been challenged in court.” Working with a main verb in the sentence (“declared” in the example given), the perfect infinitive (“to have met”) often refers to things that might have happened in the past.  However, the perfect infinitive form can also used to refer to an action that will be completed at some point in the future, as in “The company hopes with great expectations to have finished its restructuring by April.”

We can see that this form differs from the simple infinitive that we are more familiar with, as in the sentence “They want her to drop her candidacy.” In such sentences, the action in the simple infinitive (“to drop” in the example given) coincides in time or is simultaneous with the action of the main verb (“want”).

Sentences that use the perfect infinitive often mean the same thing as their perfect tense or past tense equivalent. Take a look at these examples: “He is ecstatic to have attained his quarterly sales quota.” (“He is ecstatic that he has attained his quarterly sales quota.”) “She regrets to have turned down his marriage proposal.” (‘She regrets that she had turned down his marriage proposal.”) “The board seems to have lost confidence in you.” (It seems that the board has lost confidence in you.”)

The perfect infinitive can also be used in a clause with a verb that has no subject to refer to events that did happen in the past or to events that might have happened but didn’t happen, as in these examples: “To have earned the highest honors in class despite being blind was an outstanding feat.” (The blind student did get the highest honors.) “To have won the debating championship would have great, but even landing third runnerup was a great consolation.” (The debater lost the championship.)

Now let’s take a look at the usage of the perfect infinitive “to have been,” which as I mentioned earlier I had taken up briefly in the Forum in 2011. This special form of the perfect infinitive has two applications, namely:

1. As a noun form to denote a hypothetical state or condition in the past, or a state or condition in the past that has been determined to be true only now: “To have been his associate would have boosted her political career.” (as the subject of the sentence) “It’s great imagining to have been her costar in that movie.” (as complement) “The legislator was found to have been unqualified for public office in the first place.” (as adverbial modifier).

2. As a noun form to denote a state or action in the past that is no longer subsisting (used with the passive form of such telling verbs as “say,” “believe,” “consider,” “assume,” “suppose,” and “think”): “He is reputed to have been an outstanding student leader in the 1960s.” “She is widely thought to have been the most beautiful woman of her time.”

(Next: The perfect gerund)

This essay first appeared in the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times in its February 7, 2016 issue, © 2016 by Manila Times Publishing. All rights reserved.

The form and uses of the perfect gerund

Last time we took up the perfect infinitive as a grammatical form that, in tandem with the main verb of a sentence, either refers to things that might have happened in the past, as in “The board seems to have lost confidence in you,” or to an action that will be completed at some point in the future, as in “The company hopes with great expectations to have finished its restructuring by April.” This time we will take up in greater detail the form and uses of the perfect gerund.

Recall that a gerund is a verb form with “-ing” affixed to it to make it function as a noun, as in the sentence “The therapist suggested jogging as a simple antidote to lethargy.” Here, “jogging” is a gerund that serves as the direct object of the verb “suggested.” It has no tense and does not in itself indicate the time when its action takes place.

A simple gerund can refer to the same time as that of the verb in the main clause, as in “She loves listening to classical music” (where the act of “listening” happens at the same time as “loving” it), or it can refer to a time before that of the verb in the main clause, as in “He regretted not joining the literary club when he was in college” (where the decision of  “not joining the literary club” obviously happened before “regretting” that decision).

In contrast, a perfect gerund differs from the simple gerund in two respects: (1) It always refers to a time before that of the verb in the main clause, and (2) It is only used if the occurrence of the action expressed by the gerund is not obvious from the context of the statement.

The perfect gerund has the form “having been + past participle of the verb,” as in this example: “She deniedhaving been divorced.” Here, the perfect gerund “having been divorced” is used to make it unmistakably clear that such marital status refers to a time before the woman’s denial. On the other hand, in the sentence “She denied being divorced,” the simple gerund “being divorced” is used to indicate that the woman was indeed not a divorcee precisely at the same time that she denied it.

Perfect gerunds of certain verbs can also take the passive form, as in “She complained of having been unfairly bypassed for promotion.” Here, the passive perfect gerund “having been unfairly bypassed” functions as a complement of the verb “complained.” The sense is that the bypassing of the woman for promotion happened at a time before that of the verb “complained.” (By the way, that sentence using the passive perfect gerund is the equivalent of the complex sentence “She complained that she has been unfairly bypassed for promotion,” where the present perfect passive form “has been unfairly bypassed” is used.

A special form of the perfect gerund is “having been,” where the verb “be” in the perfect gerund isn’t followed by the usual action verb but by a noun or noun phrase instead. As I had taken up very briefly in Jose Carillo’s English Forum in 2011, this form is used to denote a state or condition that no longer subsists at the time of speaking, as in these sentence constructions:

1. A sentence using a perfect gerund as subject: “Having been a student journalist is a big advantage to mass communication majors.”

2. A sentence using a perfect gerund as object of the preposition “about”: “Edna very seldom talked about having been a beauty queen.”

3. A sentence using a perfect gerund as direct object of the verb: “The former long-serving CEO hated having been a dummy all along.”

This winds up our two-part discussion of the perfect infinitive and the perfect gerund.

This essay first appeared in the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times in its February 13, 2016 issue, © 2016 by Manila Times Publishing. All rights reserved.

Once again, all lovers should thank their lucky stars for Valentine’s Day

“If you must write about Valentine’s Day,” my wife Leonor admonished me the other day, “don’t be a spoilsport. By all means take a break from your grammar columns, but don’t try to take away the romance from Valentine’s.”

“Oh, don’t worry, Leonor,” I said, “I won’t be a spoilsport. Why would I want to do that? On the contrary, I want to tell lovers all over the world that they are right on target in doing the things they do on Valentine’s Day. I mean, you know, exchanging love tokens, whispering sweet nothings, having dinner by candlelight—good, old romance the way it should be.”

“Then you’ve got nothing really new to say,” she said. “You’ll just recycle the same old story that everybody recycles this time of year.”

“Not with this one, Leonor. I have a new thesis: that people should thank their lucky stars they can celebrate Valentine’s Day not so different from how the ancient Romans did it. As you know, those people started it all almost a thousand years before the Christian evangelists came to Europe. They had this much-awaited love festival on February 14, precisely the same day as today’s Valentine’s Day. It went by another name, of course. They called it the Lupercalia.”

“Umm...interesting,” Leonor said. “Tell me more about it.”

“The Lupercalia, in plain English, was the ‘Feast of the Wolf-God.’ It was an ancient fertility rite in honor of a god who protected sheep from the wolves. Its high point was a mating game, a lottery for young, unmarried men and women. The organizers would write the names of qualified, interested women on small pieces of parchment, then drop them into a big vase. Each qualified male drew one piece from the vase, and the woman whose name was on that piece became his date or ‘steady’ for one whole year.”

“That simple? Unacquainted couples were paired with no courtship, no legal and religious mumbo-jumbo?”

“Yes, Leonor, and they had a whole year to find out if they were temperamentally and sexually compatible. If they were, of course, they married and raised a family.”

“How wonderfully uncomplicated, but how unromantic! And my heart bleeds for the young couples that had an eye for each other beforehand. With, say, 1,000 women’s names in that lottery, the probability of a woman getting picked by a man she already liked would be next to zilch; so were the chances of a young man picking the woman he really liked. And the chances of a mutually attracted pair being mated? That’s 1/1,000 multiplied by 1/1,000 or one in a million, right?”

“Right, Leonor! A priori romances simply couldn’t bloom unless the partners decided to mutually violate the rules. But there was one good thing going for that lottery, I think: it leveled the playing field for love and procreation. It must have exquisitely churned and enriched the gene pool of the ancient Romans.”

“Maybe so, but don’t you think their ritual was so elemental, so...shall we say, ‘uncivilized’?”

“That’s saying it mildly, Leonor. It scandalized the early Christian missionaries. They found it decadent, immoral, and, of course, unchristian. So they tried to change it by frying it with its own fat, so to speak.”

“How?”

“Well, the clerics simply revoked the practice of writing the names of young, unmarried women on the pieces of parchment. They wrote on them the names of the Christian saints instead. And you know what they offered to the young, unmarried man who picked the name of a particular saint?”

“What?”

“The privilege of emulating the virtues of that saint for one whole year.”

“What spoilsports, those clerics! Why would any sensible lover whether male or female want to play that sort of game? For Pete’s sake, that lottery was for love and romance and chance encounters, not for sainthood!”

“That’s right, so the Romans resisted the new mechanics and stuck to the old. It was two centuries before the evangelists again tried to stamp out the Lupercalia in a big way. In 490 A.D., Pope Gelasius canonized a Roman by the name of Valentine. He was, by tradition, a priest martyred 220 years before for violating a ban on performing marriages during wartime. Valentine was stoned to death on a February 14, Lupercalia Day, so his feast day was conveniently made to coincide with it. In a sense, the clerics finally succeeded in Christianizing the ancient rites, but only in name and only edgewise, in a manner of speaking. As history would prove, no power on earth could stamp out its earthly and earthy attractions.”

‘You’ve got a lovely story there,” Leonor said, “and you kept your promise of not being a spoilsport. So Happy Valentine’s Day, my love!”

“For you, Leonor, Happy Lupercle’s Day just this once, OK?” (February 13, 2004)

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the February 13, 2004 issue of The Manila Times. This essay subsequently appeared as Chapter 145 of the author’s book Give Your English the Winning Edge, © 2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

A full-dress review of the perfect tenses

In the English language, we generally mark occurrences through time with the simple past tense, the present tense, and the future tense. However, these simple tenses prove inadequate for capturing the idea that an act or occurrence has been completed or not, that it continues or has stopped, or that it has become a done thing. The English language takes recourse to the so-called perfect tenses to describe an action, occurrence, or circumstance more fully as it has unfolded or is unfolding in the time continuum.

The series of five essays below, written for my weekly column in The Manila Times though the month of December 2015, makes a full-dress review of the perfect tenses. The first essay was in reply to a question raised by Forum member Miss Mae about a certain doubtful usage of tense, and the four subsequent essays sought to clarify and render with greater precision the four tentative conclusions about the perfect tenses that she presented after reading that first essay.

1 – What a sentence needs to take a true perfect tense

This intriguing grammar question was posted recently in Jose Carillo’s English Forum by member Miss Mae:

“Sir, in the sentence below from an article in the Humanity in Action website, why is there no ‘had’ before the verb ‘developed’?

“‘The communist legacy of isolation and the consequent stereotypes that developed also exerted a huge influence on the self-perception of people with disabilities.’”

My reply to Miss Mae:

It’s clear from your question that you considered that sentence to be in the past perfect tense, so it should have used the verb form “had developed” instead of “developed” to read as follows: “The communist legacy of isolation and the consequent stereotypes that had developed also exerted a huge influence on the self-perception of people with disabilities.”

Using the past perfect form “had developed” in that sentence is incorrect, however. This is because the sentence you quoted isn’t in the present perfect but in the simple past tense. The long noun phrase “the communist legacy of isolation and the consequent stereotypes that developed” is its subject, “also exerted” is the operative verb, and the noun phrase “a huge influence on the self-perception of people with disabilities” is the sentence complement.

Indeed, in that sentence, the word “developed” isn’t functioning as a verb. Together with the conjunction “that,” it forms the descriptor “that developed” to modify the subject, “the communist legacy of isolation and the consequent stereotypes.” That descriptor—it doesn’t use the auxiliary verb “has” or “have” or “had”—simply reports that the development took place without indicating whether it has ended, is ending, or will end sometime in the future.

So when would “had” be needed to work with “developed” in a sentence? It’s when we need to use the true perfect tenses to indicate the completion or “perfection” of that development in relation to a particular event or point in time.

We use the past perfect tense (had + past participle of the verb) when that development was completed with respect to another action or event in the past, as in “The communist legacy of isolation had developed before the country could institute democratic reforms.”

We use the present perfect tense (have + past participle of the verb) when that development is completed with respect to the present, but precisely when isn’t specified: “The communist legacy of isolation has developed because of the weakness of the country’s democratic institutions.”

And we use the future perfect tense (will have + past participle of the verb) when that development will be completed with respect to another future action or event: “The communist legacy of isolation will have developed by the time the country’s dictatorship decides to stop its brutal expansionist tendencies.”

Part 2 - A full-dress review of the perfect tenses

Last week, I discussed why the verb form “developed” rather than “had developed” is the correct usage in this sentence: “The communist legacy of isolation and the consequent stereotypes that developed also exerted a huge influence on the self-perception of people with disabilities.” This was in reply to a question by Miss Mae, a member of Jose Carillo’s English Forum, who thought that that sentence is in the perfect tense and should have used the form “had developed” instead.

On the contrary, I explained, the sentence she quoted isn’t in the perfect tense but in the simple past tense. I then briefly sketched how the perfect tenses work to indicate the completion or “perfection” of an action in relation to a particular event or point in time.

My explanation drew this rejoinder from Miss Mae:

“I couldn’t help but feel that I now understand the perfect tenses better. But am I really right? These are what I have concluded from your grammatical prescriptions: (1) Use the past perfect tense when the action was completed before another action, (2) Use the present perfect tense when it is unknown when the action was completed, and (3) Use the future perfect tense when the action still has to be completed in the future.”

My reply to Miss Mae’s rejoinder:

I’m glad that my column last week enhanced your knowledge of what the perfect tense is, but I’m afraid that your three conclusions about its usage are rather fragmentary and even misleading. Evidently, my quick review of the perfect tense in last week’s column has not been comprehensive enough, so I will now make a full-dress review of that admittedly very challenging grammatical form. I’ll do it more slowly and in more detail this time to make sure that their mechanisms and uses are clearly understood.

In English, the perfect tense is a verb form that indicates that an action or circumstance occurred before another event or point in time, and focuses attention on the outcome of that occurrence rather than on that occurrence itself. This tense has three basic forms: the present perfect, the past perfect, and the future perfect. Grammatically, all three of them use a form of the auxiliary “have” together with the past participle of the verb, but the third (the future perfect) also adds the auxiliary “will” to indicate futurity of the action involved.

Take a look at this present-perfect sentence, for instance: “The lovers have prepared for their wedding.” The focus in this sentence is on the present outcome of the lovers’ preparation, which is the fact that they are now ready to be wed. This is in contrast to the sense of the present-tense sentence “The lovers prepared for their wedding,” which focuses instead on their action of preparing for that wedding. (Give yourself a few moments to understand and internalize that distinction in your mind.)

Before getting down to the nitty-gritty of the perfect tenses, however, we need to take up two major sources of confusion about them. The first is the use of the word “perfect” in the term “present perfect,” and the second is the use of the term “past particle” for the form that the main verb takes in the perfect tense.

The word “perfect” in “present perfect” strongly implies “being flawless or exact in every detail,” but its intended sense is actually that of a “perfected” or “completed” action at a certain point of time. As to the term “past participle,” it really has nothing to do with the past tense. It just so happens that a verb’s past participle is often exactly the same as its past-tense form; indeed, many grammarians consider “past participle” a misnomer and suggest calling it “perfect participle” instead.

Part 3 – The present perfect tense

In a rejoinder to my column that made a quick review of the perfect tenses (“What a sentence needs to take a true perfect tense,” December 5), Miss Mae, a member of Jose Carillo’s English Forum, made three conclusions about their usage that were rather fragmentary. I therefore started a full-dress review of the perfect tenses last week, emphasizing that they (a) indicate that an action or circumstance occurred before another event or point in time, and (b) focus attention on the outcome of that occurrence rather than on that occurrence itself.

One of Miss Mae’s slippery conclusions was that the present perfect tense is used “when it is unknown when the action was completed.” To put that conclusion in the proper perspective, let’s now take up the specific uses and workings of the present perfect.

Conceptually, the present perfect tense is used to refer to an event that occurred in an unspecified time in the past, in which the action has been completed but the time period is not or is of indefinite duration. The present perfect therefore cannot be used to refer to a specific past time—only to an unspecified or indefinite one.

Thus, it is incorrect to construct sentences like “The war-torn country has taken stringent austerity measures a year ago” or “Two feuding presidential candidates have debased Philippine politics severely last week.” The time frames of  “a year ago” and “last week” being both specific and definite, they fail to satisfy the requirement of the present perfect.

In those two sentences, the present perfect will work only if “a year ago” and “last week” are dropped: “The war-torn country has taken stringent austerity measures.” “Two feuding presidential candidates have debased Philippine politics severely.” The first sentence is now silent about exactly when the country took austerity measures, and the other about exactly when the two candidates debased Philippine politics.

The present perfect works in at least six specific ways to define events and occurrences as they unfold in time, as follows:

(a) To express a state or condition that began in the past and leads up to and including the present: “Congress has stalled on the Bangsamoro bill for months.” “The detained murder suspect has remained silent for days.” “The defenders have kept their resistance for years.”

(b) To express habitual or continued action: “She has worn high heels since eighteen.” “He has flouted conventions all through college.” “They have sworn to crush infidels even at the cost of their lives.”

(c) To indicate events occurring at an indefinite time in the past (used with the adverbs “ever,” “never,” and “before”): “Have you ever been to Geneva?” “Some women have never gone out of their own villages.” “He denies that he has courted that starlet before.”

(d) To indicate that an action happened only recently (used in tandem with the adverb “just”): “The boy has just finished eating breakfast.” “We have just watched a real shouting match on TV.”

(e) To indicate that an action happened more than once, but it’s not important or necessary to know exactly when: “I have toured Europe four times.” “He has rewritten his unpublished novel 15 times.”

(f) To indicate that something that happened in the past still continues to influence the present: “She has contemplated on having a new hairdo every day this week.” “Traffic jams have brought the city to a standstill, so the city council has intensified its search for better ways of dealing with the problem.” 

The present perfect gives us the power to better comprehend the conditions of the moment by marking them in relation to things that took place before, thus intensifying our perception of time as well as the reality of occurrences and events.

Part 4 – The past perfect tense

Let’s continue our full-dress review of the perfect tenses, this time focusing on the past perfect tense. We will do so to clarify the second of three slippery conclusions about the perfect tenses that were presented by Miss Mae, a member of Jose Carillo’s English Forum, in her rejoinder to my column last December 5. Her second conclusion was that the past perfect tense is used “when the action was completed before another action.”

That the past perfect tense is used for an action that was completed before another action is, of course, basically correct, as in “She had left to work in Dubai when her job application for a coveted Manila-based job was accepted.” This is just one of the uses of the past perfect, however. Another use is for a continuing condition that ended in the past with usually only an implicit reference to another past outcome, as in “The dead felon had taken the wrong path.”

Grammatically, the past perfect is formed in much the same way as the present perfect, with one major difference. We use the past participle of the main verb in the same way as the present perfect, but this time we pair it off with “had,” the past tense of “have,” to form the past perfect component, which we then pair off with at least one other action in the simple past tense. The typical past-perfect sentence thus consists of at least two separate actions, one in the past perfect and the other in the simple past.

The past perfect, unlike the present perfect, doesn’t cover actions that may extend to the present. Instead, it emphasizes the fact that one action, event, or condition ended before another past action, event, or condition began, as in “The couple had left for the airport when their daughter called that her flight was cancelled.” The past participle is carried by the action of the couple, “had left for the airport,” which took place before the daughter’s action of making a call about the cancellation of her flight.

In practice, the past perfect is most useful in showing the hierarchy or succession of past actions in compound or complex sentences. In particular, if the action in a coordinate clause happened before the action in the other coordinate clause, the past perfect becomes the appropriate tense for the dependent clause. Take this compound sentence, for example: “The applicant reported for the job interview promptly at 10:30 a.m., but the hiring officer had left for an emergency manager’s meeting.” The action in the second clause, “the hiring officer had left for an emergency manager’s meeting,” has to be in the past perfect because it took place before that of the first clause, which is the applicant’s reporting for the interview.

In complex past-perfect sentences, the independent clause takes the simple past tense. Consider this sentence: “The poll body disqualified the candidate because, among others, she had made material misrepresentations in her certificate of candidacy.” Both the action in the independent clause, “the poll body disqualified the candidate,” and in the dependent clause, “she had made material misrepresentations in her certificate of candidacy,” happened in the past, but the latter takes the past perfect because it precedes the former in time.

Then there is a baseline use of the past perfect that doesn’t require the explicit use of another action completed before another past event. Take a look at this sentence: “The heavy rains had lasted a month.” It states an action that began and ended sometime in the past, as opposed to the present perfect “The heavy rains have lasted a month,” which denotes a condition that began in the past and continues up to the present.

Part 5 – The future perfect tense

To complete our full-dress review of the perfect tenses, we will now take up the future perfect tense. We will do so to correct the third faulty conclusion about this tense that was presented by  Miss Mae, a member of Jose Carillo’s English Forum, in her rejoinder to my column last December 5. Her understanding was that the future perfect is used “when the action still has to be completed in the future.”

This description of the future perfect misses out on this crucial aspect: the completion of the future action or event should be with respect to another future action or point in time. To get a better sense of this, imagine that we have travelled in time and are now looking back at actions or events that will be completed after the present time (the here and now). Indeed, the future perfect will be a kind of present tense from the viewpoint of the future instead of the present.

The future perfect sentence has this general form: (Subject) + (“will have”) + (past participle of main verb) + (time relation to another future action, expressed in the present tense). Consider this example: “The woman will have cooked dinner when her friends arrive.” The sentence describes an action that continues into the future—the future perfect component—and another action or point in time, expressed in the simple present, in which the action culminates.  

           

Specifically, the future perfect tense can be used for these four distinct scenarios:

1. A future action that will be completed before another future time or event: “The Supreme Court will have decided the candidate’s disqualification case by then.” (The act of deciding the case is done before some unspecified time in the future.) “By the time his wife comes back from her morning jog, he will have finished writing his report.” (The wife’s coming back takes place after the writer finishes his report.)

2. An action or condition that will continue up to a certain point in the future: “The executive will have held the job for 20 years when he retires in June.” “The astronaut will have been in the Space Station for a year by the time he goes back to Earth.” (In both sentences, an existing condition remains unchanged until a specific future time.)

3. A future event that will occur before a specific time or action in the future: “When yearend comes, the family will have moved to their new house.” “By the time the disqualification case against her gets decided, the candidate will have tangled with every convention and established authority.” (The independent clauses “the family will have moved to their new house” and “the candidate will have tangled with every convention and established authority” take place prior to the time frames of their respective dependent clauses.)

4. A future event whose completion is more important than how long it will take to complete it: “By the time he gets paroled, the convict will have stayed in prison for 10 years.” “At this rate, he will have taken the bar examinations six times by the time he obtains his license to practice law.” (The future perfect dramatizes the importance of the end-point of a process rather than the process itself.)

Keep in mind that in future perfect sentences, the independent clause cannot begin with the conjunctions “when,” “while,” “before,” “after,” “by the time,” “as soon as,” “if,” and “unless.” Only the dependent clause can use them. Thus, this future perfect construction is incorrect: “Anita leaves for Dubai next week when she will have obtained her work visa.” The correct construction: “When Anita leaves for Dubai next week, she will have obtained her work visa.”

This ends our four-part full-dress review of the perfect tenses.

This series of essays first appeared in the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times in its December 5, 12, 19, and 26, 2015 and January 2, 2015 issues, © 2015, 2015 by Manila Times Publishing. All rights reserved.