Is the criteria for the present perfect tense in Warriner's textbook inadequate?

[Hornbein]

Too much YouTube video, listening to uneducated chatter, and reading autocomplete text messages.
Insufficient reading of quality books.

To be pacific, rather than specific.
To tow the line, makes it a foot fault.
For all intensive purposes, with intent and purpose.
January is now followed by Febuary, obviously.
Solder has become soder, and is now approaching soda.

To tow the line. While non-traditional, it makes sense. I see a group laboriously hauling the heavy hawser of groupthink untruth. In some ways that's better.

I don't approve of all trends. Having literally mean figuratively is going too far. Now if I want to express that I have to write nonfiguratively.

 

[gmax137]

Too much YouTube video, listening to uneducated chatter, and reading autocomplete text messages.
Insufficient reading of quality books.

Even the talking heads reading the news on TV are terrible. Time was, they were educated, well spoken individuals. Not anymore.

 

[Klystron]

Righteous grammarians buck many linguistic trends in common language. Folksiness such as deliberately mispronouncing words and introducing archaic constructions becomes a social bridge between educated and audience.

Common street language becomes accessible to a much wider audience particularly from influential movies and series. Proper grammar and precise English in entertainment succumbs to attempts at authenticity. Fans of UK comedy and drama quickly develop an ear for class and education distinctions in spoken English. This carries over to period pieces and fantasy where royalty sound posh while common folk sound as if they stumbled off an "Eastenders" soundstage.

 

[Hornbein]

In his autobiography Sammy Davis Jr. wrote that Frank Sinatra hinted that Sammy's proper English was turning off the audience. ("You talk real good kid." ) SDJ began to deliberately speak wrongly. It worked.

In the autobiography of a 60's UK minor rock star (can't recall his name) I noticed he saw EVERYTHING through the glass of class. He was kind of posh -- University boy -- so he found The Kinks scary.

I've noticed that political candidates are often semi-incoherent. I guess there are a lot of voters who talk that way and hence like it. W Bush was from Maine, he wasn't brought up to talk like that. It worked for him. Smart. No wonder he was misunderestimated.

 

[sevensages]

Looking at the book right now.

Do you own a copy of the Warriner textbook, or were you at a library when you wrote this or what?

There is a very brief mention of this type of verbs in the very first chapter, on the parts of speech, where it talks about the verb phrase and 'the helping verbs'. Easy to miss and not particularly enlightening.
The text seems to be aimed at older children to young adults, native speakers, with the focus on improving their writing skills. As opposed to being a complete guide on grammar one might find e.g. in a book for foreign learners of English. There's a lot on composition and proper structure, sentence analysis, rooting out non-standard habits and common mistakes. The section on grammar looks short and very much not exhaustive (conditionals? reported speech?). But again, I don't think that's the aim.

What do you mean by conditionals (in terms of grammar)?

What do you mean by reported speech (in terms of grammar)?

 

[Bandersnatch]

Do you own a copy of the Warriner textbook, or were you at a library when you wrote this or what?

I was at my computer. The book is available from Open Library. As is Fowler's.

What do you mean by conditionals (in terms of grammar)?

What do you mean by reported speech (in terms of grammar)?

Conditionals are basically the structures with the 'if' clause. E.g. 'If I were you I'd type "English conditionals" into your search engine'. There's four (main) types for four different shades of hypotheticals.

Reported speech is a structure used when (wait for it) reporting what was said. In such cases the original sentence's tenses ought to be set back a notch, so to speak. Present simple turns into past simple, present perfect into past perfect, etc.
E.g. if the original sentence is 'Luke, I am your father', and you want to use 'he said' then you report it as 'He said he was Luke's father' (and not 'he said he is Luke's father').

Again, there's plenty websites explaining this in more detail.

I'm not clear on your background or goals, but as was alluded to before, maybe consider picking up a grammar book for advanced learners of English as a second language (C1 - C2 level). Even if you're a native speaker. These tend to be relatively thorough, self-contained, and not overly academical.
Best if you don't limit yourself to any one book, of course.

 

[sevensages]

I was at my computer. The book is available from Open Library. As is Fowler's.


Conditionals are basically the structures with the 'if' clause. E.g. 'If I were you I'd type "English conditionals" into your search engine'. There's four (main) types for four different shades of hypotheticals.

Reported speech is a structure used when (wait for it) reporting what was said. In such cases the original sentence's tenses ought to be set back a notch, so to speak. Present simple turns into past simple, present perfect into past perfect, etc.
E.g. if the original sentence is 'Luke, I am your father', and you want to use 'he said' then you report it as 'He said he was Luke's father' (and not 'he said he is Luke's father').

Again, there's plenty websites explaining this in more detail.

I'm not clear on your background or goals, but as was alluded to before, maybe consider picking up a grammar book for advanced learners of English as a second language (C1 - C2 level). Even if you're a native speaker. These tend to be relatively thorough, self-contained, and not overly academical.
Best if you don't limit yourself to any one book, of course.

You said that I should seek an English grammar textbook for advanced learners of English as a second language. Why shouldn't I seek an English grammar textbook for advanced learners of English as a first (or primary) language?

What do you think is the best English grammar textbook just for advanced learning of English grammar?

 

[Bandersnatch]

Can you please tell us your background and goals?

 

[sevensages]

Can you please tell us your background and goals?

I would like to keep my background private except I will say that English is the only language I know.

My goal is to obtain more knowledge about English grammar.

 

[sevensages]

I should have specified, since PF emphasizes providing references. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, 2002, contains an entire chapter (Ch. 9, "Mood and Modality") on modals.


The Cambridge Grammar is over 1800 pages so, in a strictly literal sense, I suppose it outweighs Warriner's 1000 pages.

EDIT: To be fair, the discussion of grammar is nearly incomprehensible to a non-expert if you get far into it. Here is just one of many pages discussing should, for example
View attachment 344613

In post 3#, you told me that because the past tense of the modal verb "should" is formed as "should have" + past participle. Then in post 5# I asked you where you learned this. Then in post 13#, you responded with the post that I am replying to on this post. In post 13#, you wrote that you learned that the past tense of the modal verb should is formed as "should have + past participle" in The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. I recently bought the book The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Last night I skimmed over every single page of Chapter 3: The Verb, which is from page 71 to page 212. I did not see anything in there that says that the past tense of should is "should have + past participle". You posted a photograph of page 186 of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language on post #13. Although page 186 does deal with the word should, nothing on page 186 says that the past tense of the modal verb should is "should have + past participle".

We had this conversation in May of 2024. I never brought this issue up with you until 16 months later because I did not own a copy of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language until about a month ago.
Where in The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language does it say that the past tense of the word should is "should have + past participle"? I cannot find it.

 

[gmax137]

I had forgotten this thread.

As a boy, every time I said "I forget," my father said, "I have forgotten" in a stern voice.