past perfect

[palinkasocsi]

Dear Friends,

I'm currently reading a book on past perfect and it says:


'The man on the right said that he had not been feeling well, but he got his muffin so he now feels better.'


And the explanation goes:


"In this sentence it is odd to say that the past perfect form "had not been" is determined relative to the reporting verb "said", since we cannot explain the other verbs "got" and "feels" in this way."


Could anyone explain this expalnation to me?


Thank you very much.


Palinkasocsi

[Marius Hancu]

Why are you reading books that don't help you?

First:

1. The man on the right said that he had not been feeling well.

can be transformed with tense simplification in the relative subordinate starting with that
past perfect -> simple past

2. The man on the right said that he was not feeling well.

but they're not exactly equivalent, as 1 more clearly shows the precedence of the action told by feel re the one told by say (reporting). In 2 the feeling is contemporaneous, while in 1 is previous.

That's all there's to it.

[Marius Hancu]

Second:

the 2nd part.

Rigorously, this should have been:

The man on the right said that he had not been feeling well, but [that] he had in the meanwhile/lately got/gotten his muffin so he now felt better.

with the sequence of actions as follows

he had not been feeling [the oldest moment
he had got 2nd[/B] [I]that, we would get:

The man on the right said that he had not been feeling well, but [that] in the meanwhile/lately got his muffin so he now felt better.

One step more, the author uses a trick of bringing the action to the present for making it more lively in the mind of the reader, thus he moves the final verb into the present

felt - feels

which is quite debatable, and not quite correct.

He also removes the clarifying adverbs
in the meanwhile/lately
which is OK.

Better start reading some great fiction, say Robert Penn Warren, "All the Kings Men," or Anthony Powell, "A Dance for the Music of Time," or Anthony Burgess, "Earthly Powers," than this stuff. They would do more for your English.

[palinkasocsi]

"the author uses a trick of bringing the action to the present for being more lively in the mind of the reader, he moves the final verb into the present"

What makes you think that the author uses the Historical Present (he now feels better) instead of referring to the moment of speaking?

Thanks Marius but fiction, to say the least, has never been my cup of tea.

Palinkasocsi

[Marius Hancu]

I just know. Not a new trick.

But you're right, it's the present seen as moment of speaking. That is kind of a direct quote:

He said, "I feel/I'm feeling better."