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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!microsoft!uw-beaver!tektronix!reed!elbaum
From: elbaum@reed.UUCP (Elbaum)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: orphaned response
Message-ID: <449@reed.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 8-Jan-84 15:30:51 EST
Article-I.D.: reed.449
Posted: Sun Jan  8 15:30:51 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 10-Jan-84 05:48:56 EST
Organization: Reed College, Portland OR
Lines: 17


	The present perfect has nearly replaced the past perfect in French,
and the pluperfect is replacing the anterior past.  However, the several
other past forms, such as the imperfect, the past conditional, and the im-
perfect subjunctive, are still intact.

	I think the past perfect (passe simple) is fading away because:
a) it covers almost exactly the same aspect and temporal range as the
present perfect; b) its usage has been increasingly confined in the last
couple hundred years to formal, historical, and poetic applications;
and c) the rules for deriving the various forms of this tense are more
complex than those for other tenses, and limited application makes learning
and using those rules less worthwhile.


						-Daniel Elbaum
                                             (teklabs!reed!elbaum)