Indeed it is. I seem to recall in a North American archaeology class way back
in the days of pen and paper the professor explaining that the decline of
cultures frequently can be tracked by the regression from absolute to abstract,
or from the precise to the imprecise (my term, sloppy). His examples, I
believe, were various iterations of pottery: same cultures, different times.
The glazes and designs rose from primitive and struggling through rational and
precise and then to abstract and imprecise, at which point the culture in
question collapsed, or was assimilated into a conquering culture.
On the other hand, it could be said that the sheer number of people in the
world today guarantees sloppiness and imprecision everywhere one turns, yet
within that larger number of linguistic slobs can be found a generous quantity
of genuinely literate people who do not trip and fall every time they confront
the pluperfect. We’re just harder to find. And which of us in his right mind
would have thought a photography listserv would be a haven for language
pedants? <g>
--Bob Whitmire
Certified Neanderthal
On Dec 16, 2014, at 1:07 AM, ChrisB <ftog@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> But I’m afraid that the inhabitants of North America lost the knack with the
> pluperfect tense some time ago. A common mistake is, “If I knew you were
> going to say that I would have . . .”
>
> Which should have the pluperfect in the first clause, “If I had known . . .”.
>
> Very sad face (at the loss of the sense of time in tenses). The structure of
> our language is crumbling.
--
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