The importance of grammar-perfect English - VI by Jose Carillo

We will take up today a very instructive question raised by a professor in Ontario,

Canada, about the opening sentence of my column that came out on New Years
Day 2007 (The importance of grammar-perfect English I). The sentence in
question: To get our English usage lessons off to a lively start in 2007, lets dissect
some of the most jaw-dropping grammar gaffes I had come across during the year
that has just ended.

Regarding my use of had come across in that sentence, Prof. Brett Reynolds of the
English Language Centre of the Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced
Learning asked: Why did you use the past perfect here? Standard English would
call for the simple past. Present perfect would be fine if you were to write during
this past year. But the past perfect?

Heres my open reply to Prof. Reynolds:

Dear Brett:

Your question got me thinking very deeply if I had indeed committed an error in my
grammar. Should I have used the simple past form I came across during the year
that has just ended instead of the past perfect I had come across during the year
that has just ended?
The importance of grammar-perfect English - VI by Jose Carillo

To put things in their proper timeline, Id like to make it clear that I wrote that
column specifically for a January 1 dateline. I was talking to my readers during
those very moments when the old year was turning into the new. I was therefore
not in a position yet to view events in 2006 in the manner you suggest: that they
had taken place at various times during this past year.

I was never in doubt that my use of the present perfect has just ended in
reference to 2006 was grammatically aboveboard. This, after all, is what the
present perfect is all about: a verb tense that expresses an action or state
completed at the time of speaking. And, as in the case of during this past year,
using during the year that just ended would have been semantically problematic
as well. Although grammatically correct, that phrasewithout the verb auxiliary
haswould have conveyed the wrong sense that the year ended abruptly, as if it
were a capricious being that could, in fact, end any which way it pleases.
The importance of grammar-perfect English - VI by Jose Carillo

Still, Brett, you have a point in questioning my use of had come across in that
sentence instead of came across. Before discussing the matter, though, let me
clarify first that I used had come across not as a stand-alone verb phrase but as
an integral part of the relative clause (that) I had come across during the year that
has just ended, the whole of which modified the noun gaffes. But since it
happened that I came up with an elliptical construction that dropped the
conjunction that, the clause took this semantically baffling form: lets dissect
some of the most jaw-dropping grammar gaffes I came across during the year that
has just ended.

This elliptical form of the clause created a serious semantic problem. Without the
conjunction that, it wasnt clear anymore that I came across during the year that
has just ended was a relative clause that contained another relative clause. Worse,
it gave the impression that the speaker was giving over something demanded or
coming through with something.* What I wanted to convey, of course, was to
chance upon, and to come up with this meaning I decided to preface come
across with the verbal auxiliary had. I think youll agree with me that had come
across did convey the meaning chanced upon better, but as you have pointed
out, its also clear that it had led me to an inappropriate use of the past perfect.

So, Brett, as grammar-perfect as I can make it, here again is that clause: lets
dissect some of the most jaw-dropping grammar gaffes that I came across during
the year that has just ended. (2007)
The importance of grammar-perfect English - VI by Jose Carillo

This essay, 522nd in the series, first appeared in the weekly column English Plain
and Simple by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times in its February 5, 2007 issue,
2007 by Manila Times Publishing. All rights reserved.

The Manila Times ran one column on The importance of grammar-perfect English
series each week for seven weeks in 2006, and my Facebook Gateway to the Forum
is now running one of them every three days in succession on February 3, 6, 9, 12,
15, 18, and 21, 2017 for the benefit of new Forum members and English learners.

*COMPANION READING. Deciding precisely when to keep or knock off that

admittedly isnt simply a touch-and-go affair. It needs a fine ear for language and
lots of practice before being mastered, and it can cause confusion when done
incautiously as what happened in this case. I explained the workings of the ellipted
that in a two-part essay in my English-usage column of The Manila Times for its
October 11 and 18, 2004 issues. As a refresher for those who still feel queasy about
this usage, I later posted that two-part essay in the Forum on July 3, 2010. I
strongly recommend it as a companion reading for this grammar refresher: Getting
a better handle on when to use or to just knock off that

(Next: The importance of grammar-perfect English VI (February 21, 2017)