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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I'd guess that Latin students would know this, but those who have studied other foreign languages may not have used this term:
preterit (American)
preterite
I took a little French in high school, but do not remember having used this term, and I certainly never heard an English teacher use it as a more formal term for the simple past tense or past simple tense, as some people call it.
Is the preterite a term that is commonly used in English grammar instruction in the British Isles, for example? Or in Canada? I'm just curious.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I think that this usage is antique if not archaic but also snobby as can be. It affords a way of saying to another person "I know a great deal more about language than do you" without using so many words.
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Joined: Sep 2001
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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The term 'preterit' isn't listed as an archaic term in Webster's. I haven't come across it in the grammar texts we use at school, and, as I wrote above, never have I heard it used as a term in high school here in the states. The reason I posed the question was out of curiosity about whether English grammar instruction in countries other than the United States might still include the term. I've been looking at ESL language sites for the past few weeks to see how English is taught to students of various nationalities, and I have noticed that terms on those sites are sometimes different from the ones I'm more accustomed to as an American teacher of English. I must admit that I'm surprised not to have ever heard 'preterit' used, but thought perhaps it is used elsewhere (more likely as preterite or praeterite, from what I've read today). If there is any snobbery out there, far be it from me to be of the first to judge. I might be one of the educated last to be aware that the term exists.  Please respond if you're from a country outside of the USA in which the term is common. Thanks.
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veteran
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Well, let's see. The use of the term preterit has little to do with snobbery, but more to do with what native grammarians called grammatical categories like tense and aspect. When linguists use different grammatical terms, it's usually for a reason. When prescriptive grammarians (ab)use grammatical terms, they're usually not being accurate or reasonable. Great fun ensues.
Latin had a verbal system that showed traces of what linguists call tense (when an action takes place vis-a-vis the speech act, past-present-future) and aspect (whether an action was completed (perfect) or not (imperfect)).
Latin has:
present indicative active "I love, am loving"
imperfect indicative active: "I was loving"
future indicative active: "I shall love"
present perfect indicative active: "I have loved"
past perfect indicative active: "I had loved" (aka plusquam perfectum)
future perfect indicative active: "I shall have loved"
Greek, besides having a perfect, also had an aorist (French does likewise, often called the historical past for actions further back in history than just the perfect).
Old English (as well as some other Germanic languages) had something called the preterit-present, which was a verb class that were past (preterit) in form, but present in semantics. This class survives today as the modal or auxiliary verbs (e.g., can, may, etc.).
The word preterit is also an old Calvinist term that refers to those who are not saved by God's grace, and therefore damned. (All your good works can't save you now.)
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I've never even heard of the term. I had to look it up.
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