History of French
Nossy
the passe simple and past subjunctive for common use?
Nossy
Ruud Harmsen
sci.lang:
>Does anyone know when in history, and why, French dropped the use of
>the passe simple and past subjunctive for common use?
17 september 1846, 23:18.
--
Ruud Harmsen - http://rudhar.com
Nossy
<realemail...@rudhar.com> wrote:
>Thu, 26 Aug 2004 11:36:34 -0400: Nossy <he...@heavier.net>: in
>sci.lang:
>
>>Does anyone know when in history, and why, French dropped the use of
>>the passe simple and past subjunctive for common use?
>
>17 september 1846, 23:18.
It's hard to figure why we have participants who are so sarcastic when
responding to questions.
Ruud Harmsen
sci.lang:
>On Thu, 26 Aug 2004 17:49:12 +0200, Ruud Harmsen
><realemail...@rudhar.com> wrote:
>
>>Thu, 26 Aug 2004 11:36:34 -0400: Nossy <he...@heavier.net>: in
>>sci.lang:
>>
>>>Does anyone know when in history, and why, French dropped the use of
>>>the passe simple and past subjunctive for common use?
>>
>>17 september 1846, 23:18.
>
>It's hard to figure why we have participants who are so sarcastic when
>responding to questions.
I'm sorry, I couldn't resist this time. I don't do this all the time,
do I?
And I'm genuinely interested in any real answers too.
Mxsmanic
> Does anyone know when in history, and why, French dropped the use of
> the passe simple and past subjunctive for common use?
I think that it has just been a gradual change, as most such changes
tend to be. I'm actually not sure that the passé simple was ever used
in conversation to begin with (assuming that's what you mean by "common
use"--the tense is still widely used in writing).
I'm not aware of a past subjunctive in French, although there's an
imperfect subjunctive, and one can form a passé composé du subjonctif if
one feels so inclined (it is occasionally used). The subjective mood in
general is relatively rare in French outside of some standard
constructions where it is mandatory or nearly so.
--
Transpose hotmail and mxsmanic in my e-mail address to reach me directly.
Harlan Messinger
"Nossy" <he...@heavier.net> wrote in message
news:dq0si0dbothncd899...@4ax.com...
> Does anyone know when in history, and why, French dropped the use of
> the passe simple and past subjunctive for common use?
"It was also during the 1600s that the past historic and the imperfect
subjunctive began to disappear from use in spoken French on account of their
complexity. ":
http://www.realfrench.net/grammar/unit.php?id=1
Except that the part about complexity makes no sense at all. These tenses
aren't any more complex than the present or the future or the imperfect.
By the way--the same thing has happened in Italian, AIUI. A similar shift
occurred in German and Dutch; I don't know what the relationship of that
shift is to the one in the Romance languages.
Harlan Messinger
"Mxsmanic" <mxsm...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:vudsi0p5g3j0vc8a5...@4ax.com...
> Nossy writes:
>
> > Does anyone know when in history, and why, French dropped the use of
> > the passe simple and past subjunctive for common use?
>
> I think that it has just been a gradual change, as most such changes
> tend to be. I'm actually not sure that the passé simple was ever used
> in conversation to begin with (assuming that's what you mean by "common
> use"--the tense is still widely used in writing).
It certainly was used in conversation. It evolved directly from the Latin
preterite, and it was being used before the passé composé even existed.
amavi >> aimai
amavisti >> aimas
amavit >> aima
amavimus >> aimāmes
amavistis >> aimātes
amaverunt >> aimčrent
>
> I'm not aware of a past subjunctive in French, although there's an
> imperfect subjunctive, and one can form a passé composé du subjonctif if
> one feels so inclined (it is occasionally used). The subjective mood in
> general is relatively rare in French outside of some standard
> constructions where it is mandatory or nearly so.
The present subjunctive is quite common. You are correct that "past
subjunctive" is technically what they call "l'imparfait du subjonctif".
Nossy
As a past subjunctive one could say in French: Je voulais qu'il
m'ecrivisse. Like Spanish: Yo queria que el me
escribiera/escribiese........
So the question of interest would be why did the French lose it and
the Spanish not? Did it have something to do with Napoleon's reforms
in France?
Peter T. Daniels
No.
I can definitively say that without the slightest familiarity with the
history of Modern French.
--
Peter T. Daniels gram...@att.net
pierre.levy
"Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@worldnet.att.net> a écrit dans le message de
news:412E62...@worldnet.att.net...
> Nossy wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, 26 Aug 2004 16:10:51 -0400, "Harlan Messinger"
> > <h.mes...@comcast.net> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > >"Mxsmanic" <mxsm...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> > >news:vudsi0p5g3j0vc8a5...@4ax.com...
> > >> Nossy writes:
> > >>
> > >> > Does anyone know when in history, and why, French dropped the use
of
> > >> > the passe simple and past subjunctive for common use?
> > >>
> > >> I think that it has just been a gradual change, as most such changes
> > >> in conversation to begin with (assuming that's what you mean by
"common
> > >> use"--the tense is still widely used in writing).
> > >
> > >It certainly was used in conversation. It evolved directly from the
Latin
> > >
> > > amavi >> aimai
> > > amavisti >> aimas
> > > amavit >> aima
> > > amavistis >> aimtes
> > > amaverunt >> aim rent
> > >
> > >>
> > >> I'm not aware of a past subjunctive in French, although there's an
if
> > >> one feels so inclined (it is occasionally used). The subjective mood
in
> > >> general is relatively rare in French outside of some standard
> > >> constructions where it is mandatory or nearly so.
> > >
> > >The present subjunctive is quite common. You are correct that "past
> > >subjunctive" is technically what they call "l'imparfait du subjonctif".
> >
> > As a past subjunctive one could say in French: Je voulais qu'il
> > m'ecrivisse. Like Spanish: Yo queria que el me
> > escribiera/escribiese........
> >
> > So the question of interest would be why did the French lose it and
> > the Spanish not? Did it have something to do with Napoleon's reforms
> > in France?
>
> No.
>
> I can definitively say that without the slightest familiarity with the
> history of Modern French.
> --
> Peter T. Daniels gram...@att.net
As a French speaker, I am not sure
that either the "passe simple"(1), the
"imparfait du subjonctif" (2) or
the "plus que parfait du subjonctif" (3)
are definitively dead. Some French
people still like to use them in
conversation. It is too early to
give a date of death.
(Aimer = to love)
(1) j' aimai
tu aimas
il aima
nous aimames
vous aimates
ils aimerent
(2) que j' aimasse
que tu aimasses
qu'il aimat
que nous aimassions
que vous aimassiez
qu'ils aimassent
(3) que j' eusse aime
que tu eusses aime
qu'il eut aime
que nous eussions aime
que vous eussiez aime
qu'ils eussent aime
... But be aware that
1) I didn't put compulsory diacritics.
2) A bad use of those tenses or there
use in an irrelevant context make the
speech pedantic and ridiculous.
Petro.
Nossy
qui *causerent* l'elimination du simple et subjonctive.
Mxsmanic
> So the question of interest would be why did the French lose it and
> the Spanish not?
It isn't lost, it's just uncommon in the spoken language.
Mxsmanic
> "It was also during the 1600s that the past historic and the imperfect
> subjunctive began to disappear from use in spoken French on account of their
> complexity. ":
>
> http://www.realfrench.net/grammar/unit.php?id=1
>
> Except that the part about complexity makes no sense at all. These tenses
> aren't any more complex than the present or the future or the imperfect.
I don't think it's complexity. There just aren't many occasions to use
them in the spoken language. The conjugations of the imperfect
subjunctive are not especially complex, but it's unusual to have a need
for the tense, and so one tends to forget them, particularly for
irregular verbs. The passé simple is even easier to conjugate, but the
spoken language doesn't often call for it; in French the passé simple
requires a much greater isolation in the past to justify it than does
the simple past in English, which is routinely used for quite recent
events, especially by Americans.
Jacques Guy
> Petro, peut-etre vous pouvez nous expliquer (en anglais) les evenments
> qui *causerent* l'elimination du simple et subjonctive.
Not quite eliminated. Thirty years ago I met a priest
who used the passé simple where everyone used the passé composé.
No, it was not "bookish" French at all. It was just how
the peasants spoke in his home region. I did not pay
attention to his use of the subjunctive. I systematically
use the subjunctive present in everyday speech, and my
posts here testify that I am no prescriptivist.
The subjunctive imperfect is another matter. I use
it only in writing. I do use it in everyday speech,
but only those forms without the -iss-/-ass- suffix,
in which case I use the subjunctive present.
I will use the passé simple in a speech, in a presentation,
when appropriate (passé simple and passé composé do convey
different meanings).
Jacques Guy
> I don't think it's complexity. There just aren't many occasions to use
> them in the spoken language. The conjugations of the imperfect
> subjunctive are not especially complex, but it's unusual to have a need
> for the tense, and so one tends to forget them, particularly for
> irregular verbs. The passé simple is even easier to conjugate, but the
> spoken language doesn't often call for it; in French the passé simple
> requires a much greater isolation in the past to justify it than does
> the simple past in English, which is routinely used for quite recent
> events, especially by Americans.
Yes, that is a nice way of putting it.
Miguel Carrasquer
<mxsm...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Harlan Messinger writes:
>
>> "It was also during the 1600s that the past historic and the imperfect
>> subjunctive began to disappear from use in spoken French on account of their
>> complexity. ":
>>
>> http://www.realfrench.net/grammar/unit.php?id=1
>>
>> Except that the part about complexity makes no sense at all. These tenses
>> aren't any more complex than the present or the future or the imperfect.
>
>I don't think it's complexity. There just aren't many occasions to use
>them in the spoken language. The conjugations of the imperfect
>subjunctive are not especially complex, but it's unusual to have a need
>for the tense, and so one tends to forget them, particularly for
>irregular verbs.
It's not unusual to have a need for the past subjunctive in
Spanish, where it has not been forgotten (there are in fact
two synonymous conjugations for it in Spanish).
>The passé simple is even easier to conjugate, but the
>spoken language doesn't often call for it; in French the passé simple
>requires a much greater isolation in the past to justify it than does
>the simple past in English, which is routinely used for quite recent
>events, especially by Americans.
I don't think "isolation in the past" has anything to do
with it in modern spoken French. The passé simple is used
for pedantic or jocular reasons, and can always be replaced
by the periphrastic past. There is no difference in
meaning.
In most varieties of South American Spanish, we see the
exact opposite of what has happened in French: the
periphrastic perfect has been lost in favour of the passé
simple ( = pretérito indefinido). Something similar has
happened in Portuguese (except the periphrastic perfect has
acquired a niche of its own there to express a kind of past
habitual).
There is no point in asking _why_ this has happened. If you
have two past tenses, one of them can replace the other. Or
not.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
m...@wxs.nl
Harlan Messinger
>Harlan Messinger writes:
>
>> "It was also during the 1600s that the past historic and the imperfect
>> subjunctive began to disappear from use in spoken French on account of their
>> complexity. ":
>>
>> http://www.realfrench.net/grammar/unit.php?id=1
>>
>> Except that the part about complexity makes no sense at all. These tenses
>> aren't any more complex than the present or the future or the imperfect.
>
>I don't think it's complexity.
It isn't complexity. The present tense has five or six forms. The past
tense has six forms. The imperfect has five forms. The future has six
forms. The present subjunctive has five or six forms.
>There just aren't many occasions to use
>them in the spoken language.
There aren't many occasions to use the past tense? What a bizarre
notion.
>The conjugations of the imperfect
>subjunctive are not especially complex, but it's unusual to have a need
>for the tense, and so one tends to forget them, particularly for
>irregular verbs. The passé simple is even easier to conjugate, but the
>spoken language doesn't often call for it;
??? What, French people say the equivalent of, "Yesterday I go to
work, and when I get home I find my house has been broken into?"
>in French the passé simple
>requires a much greater isolation in the past to justify it than does
>the simple past in English, which is routinely used for quite recent
>events, especially by Americans.
--
Harlan Messinger
Remove the first dot from my e-mail address.
Veuillez ôter le premier point de mon adresse de courriel.
Harlan Messinger
Isn't that begging the question? If the French had used the passé
simple for the more recent past, then they would have used the passé
simple for the more recent past. It sounds like you're suggesting that
they stopped using it because they weren't using it.
Harlan Messinger
You ought to get away from the notion underlying some of your
questions, that so much of language change has been a deliberate
decision or an executive command. Napoleon had nothing to do with it.
(I hope you suggested this before reading my message where I indicated
that the change began over a century before Napoleon's birth.) As with
your question about the Iranian languages and Arabic borrowings, it's
not as though the speakers of these various languages hold
international conferences to conform the ways in which their
respective languages change. If a change happens to one language,
there's usually no reason why the change *would* have occurred in the
other language. *Sometimes* similar changes take place in
*neighboring* languages (without regard to whether the languages are
related), but there's no reason to expect it.
--
Harlan Messinger
Remove the first dot from my e-mail address.
Veuillez ōter le premier point de mon adresse de courriel.
Mxsmanic
> I don't think "isolation in the past" has anything to do
> with it in modern spoken French. The passé simple is used
> for pedantic or jocular reasons, and can always be replaced
> by the periphrastic past. There is no difference in
> meaning.
There _is_ a difference in meaning. The passé simple strongly
emphasizes complete disconnection with the present; the passé composé
leaves this possibility open. You would never say "hier je quittai le
bureau de bonne heure." You could say "Napoléon a décidé à l'époque" or
"Napoléon décida à l'époque"; the latter is more formal and appropriate,
the former more conversational and colloquial.
These two tenses are largely equivalent to the past simple and present
perfect in English, the only difference being that the French place the
division between "connected to the present" and "isolated from the
present" at a considerably different point in time. The fact that the
French past simple is sometimes called the past historic illustrates
this.
Mxsmanic
> There aren't many occasions to use the past tense? What a bizarre
> notion.
There aren't many occasions to use a past tense (in conversation) that
implies total disconnection from the present.
> ??? What, French people say the equivalent of, "Yesterday I go to
> work, and when I get home I find my house has been broken into?"
They say the equivalent of "Yesterday I have gone to work, and when I
have got home I have found that my house had been broken into." That
is, they use their equivalent of a present perfect for more distant
events in the past than English speakers do (most English speakers would
use the English past simple for this).
Mxsmanic
> If the French had used the passé
> simple for the more recent past, then they would have used the passé
> simple for the more recent past. It sounds like you're suggesting that
> they stopped using it because they weren't using it.
Correct.
The dividing line between present perfect and past simple in English is
_much_ closer to the present than is the dividing line between passé
composé and passé simple in French. For whatever reason, that's the way
it is. And so the passé simple is much less used in French than is the
past simple in English, especially in contexts such as everyday
conversation where events in the distant past are rarely discussed.
Miguel Carrasquer
<mxsm...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Miguel Carrasquer writes:
>
>> I don't think "isolation in the past" has anything to do
>> with it in modern spoken French. The passé simple is used
>> for pedantic or jocular reasons, and can always be replaced
>> by the periphrastic past. There is no difference in
>> meaning.
>
>There _is_ a difference in meaning. The passé simple strongly
>emphasizes complete disconnection with the present; the passé composé
>leaves this possibility open. You would never say "hier je quittai le
>bureau de bonne heure."
I'd never say it, but I don't see why I couldn't write it.
There is no rule that you can't use the passé simple with
"hier" (Google: "hier je fus": 64 hits).
>You could say "Napoléon a décidé à l'époque" or
>"Napoléon décida à l'époque"; the latter is more formal and appropriate,
>the former more conversational and colloquial.
As I said, in modern, spoken, French, the passé simple can
_always_ be replaced by the passé composé (even if the
reverse is not always true).
>These two tenses are largely equivalent to the past simple and present
>perfect in English, the only difference being that the French place the
>division between "connected to the present" and "isolated from the
>present" at a considerably different point in time.
When?
Jacques Guy
> Isn't that begging the question? If the French had used the passé
> simple for the more recent past
Well, we never did. We used, and still use, the passé composé
for the recent past, rather, the past that still echoes
in the present. Since the past of daily conversation is
usually a recent past...
I'll try telling my wife, out of the blue "Jules a
franchi le Rubicon" when she comes home. I'm sure
she'll contemplate buying me long-sleeved pajamas
for Father's Day.
Mxsmanic
> I'd never say it, but I don't see why I couldn't write it.
You wouldn't write it because it isn't far enough in the past.
> There is no rule that you can't use the passé simple with
> "hier" (Google: "hier je fus": 64 hits).
There isn't a rule against it; it just isn't done.
Google: "hier j'ai été" - 2,770 hits
And if you look at your hits, you'll see lots of poetry and music
lyrics, Biblical passages, and dialectal variants.
> As I said, in modern, spoken, French, the passé simple can
> _always_ be replaced by the passé composé (even if the
> reverse is not always true).
There's no rule that says that, either.
> When?
In French, the point is often years in the past. In English, it's often
within the past few days (even less in American English).
Miguel Carrasquer
<mxsm...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Miguel Carrasquer writes:
>
>> I'd never say it, but I don't see why I couldn't write it.
>
>You wouldn't write it because it isn't far enough in the past.
Nonsense. "Hier, je quittai le bureau de bonne heure" is a
perfectly fine first sentence in a short story.
I suspect this whole thing about the passé simple being a
"remote past" tense is a myth created by inadequate grammars
and schoolbooks. Compare what the Président du Conseil
supérieur de la langue française de la communauté
Wallonie-Bruxelles says about the subject:
http://www.synec-doc.be/francite/rev26/wilmet.html
Il y a quelques années, j'avais été invité à Cologne à
diriger un séminaire sur les temps du passé (un gros
problème pour les Allemands, munis d'un seul «prétérit» face
à nos trois «passé simple», «imparfait», «passé composé»). À
parcourir la littérature grammaticale dont ils disposaient,
les cheveux se dressaient sur la tête. Le «passé composé»
serait un «passé proche» et le «passé simple» un «passé
lointain» (les contre-exemples abondent : Nous avons connu
Marie quand elle était jeune. Ensuite elle disparut de notre
vie...) ; l'«imparfait» évoquerait un fait «qui dure ou se
répète dans le passé» (mais Un instant après, la bombe
explosait ou Vers midi, le 31 juillet 1944, Saint-Exupéry
disparaissait en mer?).
>> There is no rule that you can't use the passé simple with
>> "hier" (Google: "hier je fus": 64 hits).
>
>There isn't a rule against it; it just isn't done.
It *is* done. I just gave you 64 examples.
>Google: "hier j'ai été" - 2,770 hits
Don't be stupid.
>And if you look at your hits, you'll see lots of poetry and music
>lyrics, Biblical passages, and dialectal variants.
So? Lots of that is what you're going to find for _any_ use
of the passé simple.
>> As I said, in modern, spoken, French, the passé simple can
>> _always_ be replaced by the passé composé (even if the
>> reverse is not always true).
>
>There's no rule that says that, either.
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/bouche-a-oreille/grammaire/tempasse.htm
3. Le passé simple
* C’est un temps qui peut remplacer le passé composé. Il
existe surtout à l’écrit, dans les textes littéraires ou
historiques, et dans certains journaux. Il correspond à l’un
des canons de la littérature traditionnelle et, pour cette
raison, a tendance à disparaître. Il est très rarement
utilisé à l’oral. Ex : Le premier texte en langue française
fut écrit en 842, ce sont les Serments de Strasbourg.
* Au contraire du passé composé, le passé simple ne peut
pas exprimer de liens avec le présent.
In other words, the semantics of the passé simple are a
subset of the semantics of the passé composé.
>> When?
>
>In French, the point is often years in the past. In English, it's often
>within the past few days (even less in American English).
I have no idea what the rules are in English. I don't even
know them for Dutch. It's certainly not a question of "the
past few days" or any such cut-off point.
In Castilian Spanish, the rule is simple. You use the
composite past when the action refers to the current time
frame, otherwise, you use the simple past. If no time frame
is explicitly or implicitly given, it defaults to "today".
Este año hemos ido a París.
Ayer fuimos a París.
Hemos ido a París. (implied: today)
Fuimos a París.
(Argentinian Spanish would use "fuimos" in all cases).
The situation in French may at one time have been the same
as in Spanish, witness the rule given in seventeenth century
grammars of French: "Parlant d'aujourd'huy, il faut vser de
l'indefiny : v.g. j'ay fait auiourd'hui, i'ai veu
auiourd'huy, &c. Si nous parlons d'hier, d'auant hier ou de
l'autre iour, on se sert du definy ; comme, hier ie vis
monsieur" (Antoine Oudin, Grammaire françoise, 1632 p.
188-189, éd. Slatkine Reprints, 1972).)"
Miguel Carrasquer
And she wouldn't were you to say, out of the blue, "Jules
francha le Rubicon"?
Harlan Messinger
>Harlan Messinger writes:
>
>> There aren't many occasions to use the past tense? What a bizarre
>> notion.
>
>There aren't many occasions to use a past tense (in conversation) that
>implies total disconnection from the present.
I'm not really interested in whether there are such occasions in
French as it is used *now*. The question is, why did it all into
disuse, when it began to fade away in the 1600s. The reason can't be
in terms of the way the passé simple is used now, *after* it has
disappeared. Presumably, the past tense, until some point, was the
past tense, and was used to described occurrences in the past just as
we do in English and as Spanish speakers do with their preterite
tense.
>
>> ??? What, French people say the equivalent of, "Yesterday I go to
>> work, and when I get home I find my house has been broken into?"
>
>They say the equivalent of "Yesterday I have gone to work, and when I
>have got home I have found that my house had been broken into."
I know what they say *now*. This confirms that you're missing the
point. You're saying that the French stopped using the passé simple
because they weren't using the passé simple.
> That
>is, they use their equivalent of a present perfect for more distant
>events in the past than English speakers do (most English speakers would
>use the English past simple for this).
--
Harlan Messinger
>Harlan Messinger wrote:
>
>> Isn't that begging the question? If the French had used the passé
>> simple for the more recent past
>
>Well, we never did. We used, and still use, the passé composé
>for the recent past, rather, the past that still echoes
>in the present.
How does this stand in relation to the claim that I posted here that
this wasn't true until the 1600s? Your assertion can't be correct
unless the French started using the passé composé in conversation
instead of the passé simple the very day they started speaking French
instead of Latin.
>Since the past of daily conversation is
>usually a recent past...
>
>I'll try telling my wife, out of the blue "Jules a
>franchi le Rubicon" when she comes home. I'm sure
>she'll contemplate buying me long-sleeved pajamas
>for Father's Day.
Fr. O'Malley
Harlan Messinger wrote in message <2p6uedF...@uni-berlin.de>...
>
>"Mxsmanic" <mxsm...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>news:vudsi0p5g3j0vc8a5...@4ax.com...
>> Nossy writes:
>>
>> > Does anyone know when in history, and why, French dropped the use of
>> > the passe simple and past subjunctive for common use?
>>
>> I think that it has just been a gradual change, as most such changes
>> tend to be. I'm actually not sure that the passé simple was ever used
>> in conversation to begin with (assuming that's what you mean by "common
>> use"--the tense is still widely used in writing).
>
>It certainly was used in conversation. It evolved directly from the Latin
>preterite, and it was being used before the passé composé even existed.
The passé composé evolved in all the Romance languages from the
Vulgar Latin (as well as the sermo usualis) periphrastic perfect:
habeo amatum, etc. Thus the passé composé was inherited along
with the synthetic passé défini.
>
> amavi >> aimai
> amavisti >> aimas
> amavit >> aima
> amavimus >> aimāmes
> amavistis >> aimātes
> amaverunt >> aimčrent
There are Latin forms amai, amasti, amaut/amat, amamus, amastis,
amarunt, some of which are attested as I remember in Cicero's
letters to Quintus and Atticus.
BTW, I never understood the circumflex on the 1st plural, since there
is no missing "s" (unless by analogy with aimātes). Cf. the imperfect
of the subjunctive from the Latin pluperfect aimāt < amasset < amavisset.
>
>>
>> I'm not aware of a past subjunctive in French, although there's an
>> imperfect subjunctive, and one can form a passé composé du subjonctif if
>> one feels so inclined (it is occasionally used). The subjective mood in
>> general is relatively rare in French outside of some standard
>> constructions where it is mandatory or nearly so.
>
>The present subjunctive is quite common. You are correct that "past
>subjunctive" is technically what they call "l'imparfait du subjonctif".
You'll find all these "dead" tenses alive and well in Le Monde editorials.
They are frowned upon in conversation except in very upscale eateries
when en état spiritueux: Monsieur le sommelier, je voudrais que
vous m'apportassiez encore un Hennessey, s'il vous plūt. ;-)
Fr. O'Malley
Fr. O'Malley
Miguel Carrasquer wrote in message ...
Yes, but not "Jules franchit le Rubicon"? ;-)
But are contemporary Gauls on a first-name basis with
their conquerors? Perhaps indeed, considering how they
refer to Buonaparte. I pass over more embarrassing
examples. ;-)
Fr. O'Malley
pierre.levy
"Nossy" <he...@heavier.net> a écrit dans le message de
news:ajusi05c215rf68sc...@4ax.com...
> Petro, peut-etre vous pouvez nous expliquer (en anglais) les evenments
> qui *causerent* l'elimination du simple et subjonctive.
Hm ... Is the following written in so bad English?
"As a French speaker, I am not sure
that either the "passe simple"(1), the
"imparfait du subjonctif" (2) or
the "plus que parfait du subjonctif" (3)
are definitively dead. Some French
people still like to use them in
conversation. It is too early to
give a date of death."
How could I explain the causes of an event, which still didn't occur?
The use of those tenses in spoken French is _rare_, but not extinct.
Maurice Grevisse explains, that those tenses are difficult or felt ugly
because they are rarely used, but not
rarely used because they are difficult or really ugly (subjective
judgement). He states that they are still living in spoken French specially
in the South of France and in Belgium in the region of Liege/Leuven. It is
noticed that complaints about bad use
of those tenses already accurred in
the XVIIth century. I'm not bothered
if somedy uses them properly in speech.
In my opinion, the main reason why we don't use them often is that we
seldom need them.
I recommend to beginners in French, that they systematically avoid them
until they are very very
familiar with that language.
Petro.
Nigel Greenwood
> "It was also during the 1600s that the past historic and the imperfect
> subjunctive began to disappear from use in spoken French on account of their
> complexity. ":
>
> http://www.realfrench.net/grammar/unit.php?id=1
>
> Except that the part about complexity makes no sense at all. These tenses
> aren't any more complex than the present or the future or the imperfect.
>
> By the way--the same thing has happened in Italian, AIUI. A similar shift
> occurred in German and Dutch; I don't know what the relationship of that
> shift is to the one in the Romance languages.
I don't know about Dutch; but there are distinct regional preferences
for the 2 forms of the past tense in Italy & German-speaking
countries. I've never heard anyone use the passé simple in standard
colloquial (as opposed to written) French, though I wouldn't be
surprised to learn that it's still used in some dialects.
Nigel
ScriptMaster language resources (Persian/Turkish/Modern & Classical
Greek/Russian/Romanian/Esperanto/IPA):
http://www.elgin.free-online.co.uk
New! EsperScript:
http://www.elgin.free-online.co.uk/esperanto.htm
Mxsmanic
> Nonsense. "Hier, je quittai le bureau de bonne heure" is a
> perfectly fine first sentence in a short story.
Most writing is not short stories.
> I suspect this whole thing about the passé simple being a
> "remote past" tense is a myth created by inadequate grammars
> and schoolbooks.
It's remarkably widespread, then, and it seems to be shared by
Francophones almost universally.
> Compare what the Président du Conseil
> supérieur de la langue française de la communauté
> Wallonie-Bruxelles says about the subject:
Why would I care what he says?
> It *is* done. I just gave you 64 examples.
I gave you 2770 examples where it is not used. I'm sure there are atoms
of palladium somewhere here in my room, but there aren't enough of them
to be statistically significant.
> Don't be stupid.
Worry not, for that is not in my nature.
> http://perso.wanadoo.fr/bouche-a-oreille/grammaire/tempasse.htm
I can cite Web pages, too. See
http://www.mxsmanic.com/proof.html
> In other words, the semantics of the passé simple are a
> subset of the semantics of the passé composé.
The passé simple and the passé composé in French work just like the past
simple and the present perfect in English, except that the temporal
range of the present perfect is considerably more constrained in
English.
> I have no idea what the rules are in English. I don't even
> know them for Dutch.
I know what the rules are in French and English.
> In Castilian Spanish, the rule is simple. You use the
> composite past when the action refers to the current time
> frame, otherwise, you use the simple past. If no time frame
> is explicitly or implicitly given, it defaults to "today".
If you say so.
Mxsmanic
> And she wouldn't were you to say, out of the blue, "Jules
> francha le Rubicon"?
She might hand him a grammar book.
pierre.levy
"Miguel Carrasquer" <m...@wxs.nl> a écrit dans le message de
news:ctsti09jtn782t9ae...@4ax.com...
> On Fri, 27 Aug 2004 14:35:14 -0700, Jacques Guy
> <jg...@alphalink.com.au> wrote:
>
> >Harlan Messinger wrote:
> >
> >> Isn't that begging the question? If the French had used the pass
> >
> >for the recent past, rather, the past that still echoes
> >in the present. Since the past of daily conversation is
> >usually a recent past...
> >
> >I'll try telling my wife, out of the blue "Jules a
> >franchi le Rubicon" when she comes home. I'm sure
> >she'll contemplate buying me long-sleeved pajamas
> >for Father's Day.
>
> And she wouldn't were you to say, out of the blue, "Jules
> francha le Rubicon"?
>
The form "francha" doesn't exist in French. It could be
supposed to belong to a verbe "francher", which doesn't
exist. On the other hand, "franchit" (from the verb "franchir")
can as well be a present as a "passe simple". This could be
a good reason for us to prefer the "passe compose" to the
"passe simple" in that case.
It must also be said that the "passe simple" is subject
to many irregularities, which don't exist at all for the
"passe compose". Given the past participle, all verbs have
a "passe compose" formed after the same model: "Jules a
franchi le Rubicon".
Petro.
Nathan Sanders
"pierre.levy" <pierre...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> In my opinion, the main reason why we don't use them often is that we
> seldom need them.
This seems to be a chicken-egg question: does the rarely-needed
meaning trigger a lack of usage, or have the meanings shifted in
response to an otherwise unprovoked change in usage?
You and some of the other posters in this thread seem absolutely
certain that rare meaning caused rare usage. What evidence is there
to support this (or any) directionality?
Nathan
--
Nathan Sanders
Linguistics Program nsan...@wso.williams.edu
Williams College http://wso.williams.edu/~nsanders
Williamstown, MA 01267
John A. Rea
Mxsmanic wrote:
> Harlan Messinger writes:
>
>
>>If the French had used the passé
>>simple for the more recent past, then they would have used the passé
>>simple for the more recent past. It sounds like you're suggesting that
>>they stopped using it because they weren't using it.
>
>
> Correct.
>
> The dividing line between present perfect and past simple in English is
> _much_ closer to the present than is the dividing line between passé
> composé and passé simple in French. For whatever reason, that's the way
> it is. And so the passé simple is much less used in French than is the
> past simple in English, especially in contexts such as everyday
> conversation where events in the distant past are rarely discussed.
>
Everyone should read these last six lines after a fourth martini, and
them lest someone else read them, going bonkers and soiling his
underwear. On second thought just burn them and go right to the
martini.
Jack
Mxsmanic
> It must also be said that the "passe simple" is subject
> to many irregularities, which don't exist at all for the
> "passe compose".
Of course they do. Être and avoir are both irregular.
> Given the past participle, all verbs have
> a "passe compose" formed after the same model: "Jules a
> franchi le Rubicon".
That's like saying "given the correct conjugation, the rest is
invariant."
André Keshav
"Ruud Harmsen" <realemail...@rudhar.com>
Nossy <he...@heavier.net>
| >Does anyone know when in history, and why, French dropped the use of
| >the passe simple and past subjunctive for common use?
|
| 17 september 1846, 23:18.
Was that a decree by king Ubu?
Miguel Carrasquer
I have never had the occasion to use the passé simple
(either in French or in my mother language Catalan), and was
too lazy to look up the correct form.
Incidentally, the Catalan situation is interesting. The
"passé simple" (pretèrit perfet) is completely dead in the
spoken language (it's still the main narrative tense in
literature), but it has not been replaced by the
periphrastic perfect (as in French), but by a special
periphrastic form of <anar> "to go" + infinitive. So
instead of (let me look it up:)
aní, anares, anà, anàrem, anàreu, anaren,
in Catalan you say:
vaig anar, vas anar, va anar, vam anar, vau anar, van anar
The forms he anat, has anat, etc. are used more or less as
in Spanish: they indicate action within the current time
frame, e.g. (avui, aquest any) he anat...
> It must also be said that the "passe simple" is subject
>to many irregularities, which don't exist at all for the
>"passe compose". Given the past participle, all verbs have
>a "passe compose" formed after the same model: "Jules a
>franchi le Rubicon".
So "Jules César a franchi le Rubicon" is a possible French
sentence (e.g. "En rentrant de sa campagne en Gaule, César
a franchi le Rubicon à la tête de ses légions").
In the case Jacques mentioned, an out-of-the-blue
exclamation, I know that in Dutch you can say:
Julius Caesar is de Rubicon overgetrokken.
This is a statement of fact. Using the simple past is also
possible:
Julius Caesar trok de Rubicon over,
but one expects a narrative to follow.
James Kanze
|> Miguel Carrasquer writes:
[...]
|> > In other words, the semantics of the passé simple are a subset of
|> > the semantics of the passé composé.
|> The passé simple and the passé composé in French work just like the
|> past simple and the present perfect in English, except that the
|> temporal range of the present perfect is considerably more
|> constrained in English.
There is a slight degree of truth here, in that the historical
differences between the passé simple and the passé composé are similar
to the present differences between the two tenses in English. However:
- the difference is NOT temporal, neither in English, nor in
historical French -- in both cases, there would be a connection with
the present if the compound tense were used, and
- in modern French, in all but the highest uses, the passé simple will
be replaced with the passé composé -- in everyday conversations, the
passé simple simply doesn't occur.
|> > I have no idea what the rules are in English. I don't even
|> > know them for Dutch.
|> I know what the rules are in French and English.
Apparently not.
The rules in both cases are complex, and in both cases, they change with
time. In no case, however, does the choice of tense it depend on how
long since the action has taken place (although I understand that this
is the case in some provencial dialects).
Note that the loss of one of the past tenses in Romance languages seems
pretty prevelant. Miguel has pointed out the case of Latin American
Spanish (which I wasn't aware of). There is also the case of Italian,
where the simple past is pratically absent from the spoken language in
the north, and the compound past in the south. This curiously resembles
the pattern in German (but in reverse -- the simple past is still used
in formal German, and in northern Germany, but is completely absent from
spoken German in south Germany).
--
James Kanze
Conseils en informatique orientée objet/
Beratung in objektorientierter Datenverarbeitung
9 place Sémard, 78210 St.-Cyr-l'École, France +33 (0)1 30 23 00 34
James Kanze
|> Mxsmanic <mxsm...@hotmail.com> wrote:
|> >Harlan Messinger writes:
|> >> "It was also during the 1600s that the past historic and the
|> >> imperfect subjunctive began to disappear from use in spoken
|> >> French on account of their complexity. ":
|> >> http://www.realfrench.net/grammar/unit.php?id=1
|> >> Except that the part about complexity makes no sense at all.
|> >> These tenses aren't any more complex than the present or the
|> >> future or the imperfect.
|> >I don't think it's complexity.
|> It isn't complexity. The present tense has five or six forms. The
|> past tense has six forms. The imperfect has five forms. The future
|> has six forms. The present subjunctive has five or six forms.
The the first congugation (the most frequent) in spoken French, the
present and the imperfect tenses have three forms, with all of the
singular and the third person plurial being identical. The simple past
has five.
Which doesn't mean that I think that that is the reason. I suspect
rather a variety of causes, none of which is really conclusive: the
simple past seems more irregular in irregular verbs, there is ambguity
between it and the present in the second conguation, etc.
Mxsmanic
> - the difference is NOT temporal, neither in English, nor in
> historical French -- in both cases, there would be a connection with
> the present if the compound tense were used, and
But very often that connection is one of proximity in time.
> Apparently not.
I know them well enough to teach them, which is considerably better than
most people who merely speak and write the languages.
pierre.levy
"Nathan Sanders" <nsanders...@wso.williams.edu> a écrit dans le
message de news:nsanders.DIE.SPAM-A...@news.verizon.net...
> In article <cgnt2c$sr1$1...@news-reader5.wanadoo.fr>,
> "pierre.levy" <pierre...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>
> > In my opinion, the main reason why we don't use them often is that we
> > seldom need them.
>
> This seems to be a chicken-egg question: does the rarely-needed
> meaning trigger a lack of usage, or have the meanings shifted in
> response to an otherwise unprovoked change in usage?
>
> You and some of the other posters in this thread seem absolutely
> certain that rare meaning caused rare usage. What evidence is there
> to support this (or any) directionality?
>
> Nathan
>
You know, of course, that the "chicken-egg question" do not
exist or is falsely named: eggs did exist thousands of years before
the first population of chickens.
How can "in my opinion..." mean "I am absolutely certain that..."?
Actually I only try to answer to a question I never had asked myself
before, because it was of poor interest for me compared to other
topics. Yet in lack of evidence my opinion doesn't seem to me absurd.
Why would I use a form or expression which I know it exists, which
I learned thoroughly during my school time, and of which I hold
a constant reference near my desk in a book I can consult as often as
I want, if I don't need it? It is as a tool I would hold in a drawer for
rare though important use. But I would take the tool out of its drawer
if I needed it and as often I would need it; or if I had not it to
my disposal, I would go and try to buy or loan it. On the contrary, I
can examine the tool and see that it is in perfect state as if it
were brand new. The forms and rules of use of the French "passe simple
de l'indicatif", "imparfait du subjonctif" and "plus-que-parfait du
subjonctif" are not changed at least since the time of Richelieu,
and I can use them nearly as well as Corneille, Racine or Moliere did,
when I want. So secondarily, they certainly will not be extinct
before me.
The book I mentionned is constantly being sold in big stores.
I proposed also another possible explanation, seemingly valid in
some cases.
Petro.
pierre.levy
"Mxsmanic" <mxsm...@hotmail.com> a écrit dans le message de
news:l9pvi09pfbja6gi0e...@4ax.com...
> pierre.levy writes:
>
> > It must also be said that the "passe simple" is subject
> > to many irregularities, which don't exist at all for the
> > "passe compose".
>
>
> > Given the past participle, all verbs have
> > a "passe compose" formed after the same model: "Jules a
> > franchi le Rubicon".
>
> That's like saying "given the correct conjugation, the rest is
> invariant."
>
> --
and one form of the verb to conjugate, the rest of that part of
the conjugation is invariant". It is not simple, but simpler than
six different forms for each verb. How much simpler is it? at
least six times. In other words, you need to memorize at least six
times less forms.
Petro.
Oliver Neukum
> the north, and the compound past in the south. This curiously resembles
> the pattern in German (but in reverse -- the simple past is still used
> in formal German, and in northern Germany, but is completely absent from
> spoken German in south Germany).
Northern German has not lost the compound tense. So there's simply a
loss of a tense in an area. That's hardly unusual.
Regards
Oliver
Harlan Messinger
>Harlan Messinger <hmessinger...@comcast.net> writes:
>
>|> It isn't complexity. The present tense has five or six forms. The
>|> past tense has six forms. The imperfect has five forms. The future
>|> has six forms. The present subjunctive has five or six forms.
>
>The the first congugation (the most frequent) in spoken French, the
>present and the imperfect tenses have three forms, with all of the
>singular and the third person plurial being identical. The simple past
>has five.
Good point, but the real problem is that I shouldn't have written in
the present tense because, again, the shift began in the environment
of the 1600s, not of the present day. In the 1600s, didn't each tense,
even in spoken French, include the numbers of forms I listed above?
>
>Which doesn't mean that I think that that is the reason. I suspect
>rather a variety of causes, none of which is really conclusive: the
>simple past seems more irregular in irregular verbs, there is ambguity
>between it and the present in the second conguation, etc.
--
John A. Rea
> ^^^^^^^^^^
I have no notion what this Missgeburt of a word may be, but I'll
probably live more happily without it!
Jack
John A. Rea
Mxsmanic wrote:
> James Kanze writes:
>
>
>> - the difference is NOT temporal, neither in English, nor in
>> historical French -- in both cases, there would be a connection with
>> the present if the compound tense were used, and
>
>
> But very often that connection is one of proximity in time.
>
>
>>Apparently not.
>
>
> I know them well enough to teach them, which is considerably better than
> most people who merely speak and write the languages.
>
There's an old saying in English, "Those who can, do; those who can't,
teach."
Mxsmanic
> There's an old saying in English, "Those who can, do; those who can't,
> teach."
Currently I earn more by teaching English than by using it, although
it's not very profitable either way.
Nath Rao
> James Kanze writes:
>> - the difference is NOT temporal, neither in English, nor in
>> historical French -- in both cases, there would be a connection with
>> the present if the compound tense were used, and
>
> But very often that connection is one of proximity in time.
Is proximity in time simply due to pragmatics (due to the requirement
that the subject be referable in present and such) or is it required?
For example, can one (with appropriate beliefs) say "Only once has the
Son of God come to Earth"? Or does that remoteness in time rule that out?
Nath Rao
Jacques Guy
> For example, can one (with appropriate beliefs) say "Only once has the
> Son of God come to Earth"? Or does that remoteness in time rule that out?
1. Jésus ne s'est incarné qu'une fois. (passé composé)
2. Jésus ne s'incarna qu'une fois. (passé simple)
There is no difference I can feel.
The best I can think of is "tense agreement". You
expect le passé composé with other passés composés
around it, le passé simple with other passés simples
around it. In this case, it is narrative style.
Off the top of my head, that was. But often,
"la première impression est la bonne" as I just
posted about some demented parallels between
place names.
pierre.levy
"pierre.levy" <pierre...@wanadoo.fr> a écrit dans le message de
news:cgqpas$r87$1...@news-reader2.wanadoo.fr...
>
> "Nathan Sanders" <nsanders...@wso.williams.edu> a écrit dans le
> message de
news:nsanders.DIE.SPAM-A...@news.verizon.net...
> > In article <cgnt2c$sr1$1...@news-reader5.wanadoo.fr>,
> > "pierre.levy" <pierre...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> >
> > > In my opinion, the main reason why we don't use them often is that
we
> > > seldom need them.
> >
> > This seems to be a chicken-egg question: does the rarely-needed
> > meaning trigger a lack of usage, or have the meanings shifted in
> > response to an otherwise unprovoked change in usage?
> >
> > You and some of the other posters in this thread seem absolutely
> > certain that rare meaning caused rare usage. What evidence is there
> > to support this (or any) directionality?
> >
> > Nathan
> >
>
> You know, of course, that the "chicken-egg question" do not
doesn't
pierre.levy
>
> "pierre.levy" <pierre...@wanadoo.fr> a écrit dans le message de
> news:cgqpas$r87$1...@news-reader2.wanadoo.fr...
> >
> > "Nathan Sanders" <nsanders...@wso.williams.edu> a écrit dans le
> > message de
> news:nsanders.DIE.SPAM-A...@news.verizon.net...
> > > In article <cgnt2c$sr1$1...@news-reader5.wanadoo.fr>,
> > > "pierre.levy" <pierre...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> > >
> > > > In my opinion, the main reason why we don't use them often is
that
> we
> > > > seldom need them.
> > >
> > > This seems to be a chicken-egg question: does the rarely-needed
> > > meaning trigger a lack of usage, or have the meanings shifted in
> > > response to an otherwise unprovoked change in usage?
> > >
> > > You and some of the other posters in this thread seem absolutely
> > > certain that rare meaning caused rare usage. What evidence is there
> > > to support this (or any) directionality?
> > >
> > > Nathan
> > >
> >
>
> > exist or is falsely named: eggs did exist thousands of years before
> > the first population of chickens.
> >
> > How can "in my opinion..." mean "I am absolutely certain that..."?
> >
> > Actually I only try to answer to a question I never had asked myself
> > before, because it was of poor interest for me compared to other
> > topics. Yet in lack of evidence my opinion doesn't seem to me absurd.
> > Why would I use a form or expression which I know it exists, which
> > I learned thoroughly during my school time, and of which I hold
> > a constant reference near my desk in a book I can consult as often as
> > I want, if I don't need it? It is as a tool I would hold in a drawer for
> > rare though important use. But I would take the tool out of its drawer
> > if I needed it and as often I would need it; or if I had not it to
> > my disposal, I would go and try to buy or loan it. On the contrary, I
> > can examine the tool and see that it is in perfect state as if it
> > were brand new. The forms and rules of use of the French "passe simple
> > de l'indicatif", "imparfait du subjonctif" and "plus-que-parfait du
> > subjonctif" are not changed at least since the time of Richelieu,
> > and I can use them nearly as well as Corneille, Racine or Moliere did,
> > when I want. So secondarily, they certainly will not be extinct
> > before me.
> >
> > The book I mentionned is constantly being sold in big stores.
> >
> > I proposed also another possible explanation, seemingly valid in
> > some cases.
> >
>
"Let us notice here in general that _all_ the past tenses have been
for a long time confused in their use. ... Here is an example of these
confusions:
Apres ico i _est_ Naimes _venuz_
Meillur vassal n'_aveit_ en la curt nul
E _dist_ a l'Rei: "Bien l'_avez entendut_;
Guenes li quens co vus _ad respondut_. " (1)
... It has been tried to establish a distinction
between the "preterite defini" (= passe simple) and the
"preterite indefini" (= passe compose). The first marked
a time more distant in the past...
... This effort failed. Yet the "preterite defini",
which has been much used, is going out of use..."
=====
(1)(Chanson de Roland, XIth century)
_est venuz_ (passe compose)
_aveit_ (imparfait)
_dist_ (passe simple)
_avez entendut_ (passe compose)
_ad respondut_ (passe compose)
The informations given here are extracted from "Precis de
Grammaire Historique de la Langue Francaise" by Ferdinand
Brunot (Paris, 1899).
Petro.
Mxsmanic
> Is proximity in time simply due to pragmatics (due to the requirement
> that the subject be referable in present and such) or is it required?
The connection to the present is required. In practice, the most common
type of connection to the present is proximity in time.
> For example, can one (with appropriate beliefs) say "Only once has the
> Son of God come to Earth"? Or does that remoteness in time rule that out?
You can say it if you feel that the event is connected to the present
somehow. If you feel that it is completely disconnected from the
present, you normally would use the past simple tense instead.
Peter T. Daniels
>
> John A. Rea writes:
>
> > There's an old saying in English, "Those who can, do; those who can't,
> > teach."
>
> Currently I earn more by teaching English than by using it, although
> it's not very profitable either way.
How does one earn money by "using" a language?
--
Peter T. Daniels gram...@att.net
Peter T. Daniels
>
> Nath Rao writes:
>
> > Is proximity in time simply due to pragmatics (due to the requirement
> > that the subject be referable in present and such) or is it required?
>
> The connection to the present is required. In practice, the most common
> type of connection to the present is proximity in time.
>
> > For example, can one (with appropriate beliefs) say "Only once has the
> > Son of God come to Earth"? Or does that remoteness in time rule that out?
>
> You can say it if you feel that the event is connected to the present
> somehow. If you feel that it is completely disconnected from the
> present, you normally would use the past simple tense instead.
How does that answer the question? The statement is perfectly legitimate
and will continue to be legitimate until the second time the Son of God
comes to Earth, no matter how few or how many millennia it will be.
Nath Rao
> Nath Rao writes:
>>For example, can one (with appropriate beliefs) say "Only once has the
>>Son of God come to Earth"? Or does that remoteness in time rule that out?
> You can say it if you feel that the event is connected to the present
> somehow. If you feel that it is completely disconnected from the
> present, you normally would use the past simple tense instead.
It seems to me (I am not a native speaker, though I have lived in the US
for 25 years now) that
"I have gone to Paris only once" refers to my entire life which includes
the present moment, while "I went to Paris only once" refers to a
definite stretch of time that does not contain the present moment (even
if to be inferred from context and not specified explicitly). The length
of the time period in question is not relevant.
The starting point in French seems to be a weakening of the first part,
to judge by 17th c. remarks about passe compose being used for events of
today.
This is what I would like to confirm.
Nath Rao
Andrew Woode
> Nossy wrote:
>
> The subjunctive imperfect is another matter. I use
> it only in writing. I do use it in everyday speech,
> but only those forms without the -iss-/-ass- suffix,
> in which case I use the subjunctive present.
>
One friend of mine (French/English bilingual) said that
the -ass- suffix sounded to him like the pejorative -asse-,
giving another potential reason for avoiding it.
(He was of course aware that this was a subjective association).
What do other native speakers think of this?
- On a slight tangent; I was once given an English-French
translation to proofread (mainly to check the original had
been correctly understood). The translator (native speaker)
had produced a lot of forms which would have been correct as
3rd person singular passe simple, but were spelt as past
subjunctive. By contrast, in contexts where sequence of tenses
would have permitted the past subjunctive, the present was used.
(I restored both the correct spelling of the passe simple _and_
changed present to past subjunctive).
Mxsmanic
> What do other native speakers think of this?
I think that some speakers of English, particularly in the United
States, have some serious issues to work out, notably those connected
with their Puritanical heritage.
It would simply have never occurred to me to hear "ass" in "harassment."
It's like people who complain about "history" being sexist because it
contains "his."
I once had a manager who change a two-digit action code in an online
processing system from PP to P2 because PP sounded too naughty to say
out loud.
And there are many people who mispronounce Uranus because the correct
pronunciation conjures up too many evil associations in their
smut-obsessed minds.
Mxsmanic
> How does one earn money by "using" a language?
You'd have to ask Tom Clancy or Stephen King; I've not been very good at
it thus far.
Mxsmanic
> How does that answer the question?
It explains when you use each tense.
> The statement is perfectly legitimate and will continue to be
> legitimate until the second time the Son of God comes to Earth,
> no matter how few or how many millennia it will be.
How does that answer the question?
I don't recall any mention of legitimacy, although my post implied that
either tense would be _legitimate_, depending on the speaker's intended
meaning.
Mxsmanic
> "I have gone to Paris only once" refers to my entire life which includes
> the present moment, while "I went to Paris only once" refers to a
> definite stretch of time that does not contain the present moment (even
> if to be inferred from context and not specified explicitly). The length
> of the time period in question is not relevant.
Yes.
> The starting point in French seems to be a weakening of the first part,
> to judge by 17th c. remarks about passe compose being used for events of
> today.
The French simply set a far different threshold for distinguishing
between things that are connected to the present and things that aren't.
For the French, events have to be pretty remote (which often means far
in the past) to justify a past simple tense. Americans are just the
opposite: something must be practically happening right now before a
present perfect can be justified. The British are more generous than
Americans in their willingness to make temporal connections to the
present, but the French are orders of magnitude more so.
BrE: We've eaten breakfast this morning.
AmE: We ate breakfast this morning.
Fr: Nous avons déjeuné ce matin.
BrE: They built the pyramids thousands of years ago.
AmE: They built the pyramids thousands of years ago.
Fr: Ils bâtirent les pyramides il y a des milliers d'années.
BrE: I've already gone there twice. I'm going again this month.
AmE: I've already gone there twice. I'm going again this month.
Fr: J'y suis allée déjà deux fois. J'y vais de nouveau ce mois-ci.
BrE: Napoléon lived here.
AmE: Napoléon lived here.
Fr: Napoléon a vécu ici.
Peter T. Daniels
> And there are many people who mispronounce Uranus because the correct
> pronunciation conjures up too many evil associations in their
> smut-obsessed minds.
Which of the two standard pronunciations of "Uranus" is the "correct"
one, and which of them doesn't "conjure[] up too many evil associations"
-- Number One or Number Two?
Peter T. Daniels
>
> Nath Rao writes:
>
> > "I have gone to Paris only once" refers to my entire life which includes
> > the present moment, while "I went to Paris only once" refers to a
> > definite stretch of time that does not contain the present moment (even
> > if to be inferred from context and not specified explicitly). The length
> > of the time period in question is not relevant.
>
> Yes.
>
> > The starting point in French seems to be a weakening of the first part,
> > to judge by 17th c. remarks about passe compose being used for events of
> > today.
>
> The French simply set a far different threshold for distinguishing
> between things that are connected to the present and things that aren't.
>
> For the French, events have to be pretty remote (which often means far
> in the past) to justify a past simple tense. Americans are just the
> opposite: something must be practically happening right now before a
> present perfect can be justified. The British are more generous than
> Americans in their willingness to make temporal connections to the
> present, but the French are orders of magnitude more so.
>
> BrE: We've eaten breakfast this morning.
> AmE: We ate breakfast this morning.
"We've already eaten breakfast this morning, but we'll be happy to join
you for brunch right now."
> Fr: Nous avons déjeuné ce matin.
>
> BrE: They built the pyramids thousands of years ago.
> AmE: They built the pyramids thousands of years ago.
Despots have built the pyramids thousands of years ago, the Great Wall
of China more recently, and the Berlin Olympics Stadium in the last
century."
> Fr: Ils bâtirent les pyramides il y a des milliers d'années.
>
> BrE: I've already gone there twice. I'm going again this month.
> AmE: I've already gone there twice. I'm going again this month.
I went there twice. I see no reason to go there again this month.
> Fr: J'y suis allée déjà deux fois. J'y vais de nouveau ce mois-ci.
>
> BrE: Napoléon lived here.
> AmE: Napoléon lived here.
[There's a country estate in Riverdale, New York, called Wave Hill,
where a number of celebrities summered.]
Teddy Roosevelt has lived here, Toscanini has lived here, and now it's a
public garden and museum.
[No one can summer there any more, so my first sentence can't include
"have summered."]
> Fr: Napoléon a vécu ici.
Which is all to say, your simplistic analysis of the English present
perfect doesn't hold water.
Nossy
some committee making a decision. However, there are sociological and
cultural reasons why speakers of a certain language (i.e French) end
up letting a certain grammatical form fall into disuse whereas
speakers of a related language (i.e. Spanish) do not.
So has anything ever been suggested that explains the developments in
this regard concerning the past subjunctive and simple past in French?
Nossy
Brian M. Scott
<mxsm...@hotmail.com> wrote in
<news:6eo3j0phgo0lqb2q4...@4ax.com> in
sci.lang:
[...]
> And there are many people who mispronounce Uranus because the correct
> pronunciation conjures up too many evil associations in their
> smut-obsessed minds.
I doubt it, since the prescriptively correct pronunciation
is the one with stress on the first syllable.
Brian
Mxsmanic
> Which of the two standard pronunciations of "Uranus" is the "correct"
> one, and which of them doesn't "conjure[] up too many evil associations"
> -- Number One or Number Two?
The correct pronunciation sounds almost exactly like "your anus."
Nathan Sanders
Mxsmanic <mxsm...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Peter T. Daniels writes:
>
> > Which of the two standard pronunciations of "Uranus" is the "correct"
> > one, and which of them doesn't "conjure[] up too many evil associations"
> > -- Number One or Number Two?
>
> The correct pronunciation sounds almost exactly like "your anus."
Webster.com lists the "urine us" pronunciation first.
(I take it you failed to catch Peter's joke...)
Nathan
pronounces it like an IPA transcription
--
Nathan Sanders
Linguistics Program nsan...@wso.williams.edu
Williams College http://wso.williams.edu/~nsanders
Williamstown, MA 01267
David Brandon Thomas
<mxsm...@hotmail.com> writes:
>Andrew Woode writes:
>
>> What do other native speakers think of this?
>
>I think that some speakers of English, particularly in the United
>States, have some serious issues to work out, notably those connected
>with their Puritanical heritage.
Huh huh... you said 'it.'
>It would simply have never occurred to me to hear "ass" in "harassment."
>It's like people who complain about "history" being sexist because it
>contains "his."
I'm really not sure I buy the sexist language hypothesis.
If anything, I'm all for giving English an official sex-neutral pronoun;
namely, by expanding the role of the one it already has: it. Can't it simply
be thought of not as 'neither male nor female,' but 'uncertain?' We have
plenty of gender-confused youth in America, so why can't we have a pronoun to
refer to them?
>I once had a manager who change a two-digit action code in an online
>processing system from PP to P2 because PP sounded too naughty to say
>out loud.
I wonder what he thinks of PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol), often changed
stupidly to P2P, which stands for 'person to person,' not P 'to' (=2) P!
Stupid internetsprachen.
>And there are many people who mispronounce Uranus because the correct
>pronunciation conjures up too many evil associations in their
>smut-obsessed minds.
I'll always prefer the rather ominous-sounding Greek 'Ouranos...' now that
sounds like a god who could kick your ass.
>--
>Transpose hotmail and mxsmanic in my e-mail address to reach me directly.
Alas... too many 'Klingons around Uranus' jokes have ruined English
pronunciation.
- Vae
"You are here to learn the mysteries of Kung Fu, not linguistics. If you can't
understand me, I will communicate with you like I would a dog. When I yell,
when I point, when I beat you with my stick!" {Pai Mei}
David Brandon Thomas
<gram...@worldnet.att.net> writes:
A merry jest, surely--he was merely pointing out how ill a teacher's salary is
these days, I suppose. (What's Old French for 'benefit of a doubt?')
Peter T. Daniels
>
> In article <49d5j0hdeah2765kl...@4ax.com>,
> Mxsmanic <mxsm...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Peter T. Daniels writes:
> >
> > > Which of the two standard pronunciations of "Uranus" is the "correct"
> > > one, and which of them doesn't "conjure[] up too many evil associations"
> > > -- Number One or Number Two?
> >
> > The correct pronunciation sounds almost exactly like "your anus."
>
> Webster.com lists the "urine us" pronunciation first.
>
> (I take it you failed to catch Peter's joke...)
>
> Nathan
> pronounces it like an IPA transcription
Des, you're being poached on ...
Even the last of the vowels?
Nathan Sanders
"Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
[on "Uranus"]
> > Nathan
> > pronounces it like an IPA transcription
>
> Des, you're being poached on ...
Meh. I was postsig-posting before I took my first (disastrous) baby
steps in sci.lang. Independent innovation.
> Even the last of the vowels?
It comes out something like "oor ran noose", with primary stress on
the first syllable and secondary on the last. It sounds silly, but so
do the two standard pronounciations, so I just try not to say it at
all.
Nathan
not an astronomer or a classicist
Peter T. Daniels
>
> In article <41330C...@worldnet.att.net>,
> "Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
> [on "Uranus"]
> > > Nathan
> > > pronounces it like an IPA transcription
> >
> > Des, you're being poached on ...
>
> Meh. I was postsig-posting before I took my first (disastrous) baby
> steps in sci.lang. Independent innovation.
>
> > Even the last of the vowels?
>
> It comes out something like "oor ran noose", with primary stress on
> the first syllable and secondary on the last. It sounds silly, but so
> do the two standard pronounciations, so I just try not to say it at
> all.
>
> Nathan
> not an astronomer or a classicist
A classicist could go with Ouranos and avoid the problem.
Harlan Messinger
"Miguel Carrasquer" <m...@wxs.nl> wrote in message
news:cpc1j0hjshann4ps1...@4ax.com...
> >
> > The form "francha" doesn't exist in French. It could be
> >supposed to belong to a verbe "francher", which doesn't
> >exist. On the other hand, "franchit" (from the verb "franchir")
> >can as well be a present as a "passe simple". This could be
> >a good reason for us to prefer the "passe compose" to the
> >"passe simple" in that case.
Spanish has the same problem with the first person plural for regular first-
and third-conjugation verbs, but so far that hasn't been sufficient impetus
to drop the preterite. (The first conjugation forms are theoretically
distinct in Portuguese: close "a" in present "falamos", open in preterite
"falámos"; are there dialects of Portuguese where open and close "a" are no
longer distinguished?)
Similarity of forms hasn't destroyed the French present subjunctive nor the
Portuguese distinction between the future subjunctive and the personal
infinitive.
>
> I have never had the occasion to use the passé simple
> (either in French or in my mother language Catalan), and was
> too lazy to look up the correct form.
>
> Incidentally, the Catalan situation is interesting. The
> "passé simple" (pretèrit perfet) is completely dead in the
> spoken language (it's still the main narrative tense in
> literature), but it has not been replaced by the
> periphrastic perfect (as in French), but by a special
> periphrastic form of <anar> "to go" + infinitive. So
> instead of (let me look it up:)
>
> aní, anares, anà, anàrem, anàreu, anaren,
>
> in Catalan you say:
>
> vaig anar, vas anar, va anar, vam anar, vau anar, van anar
Yes, annoying as hell, since it resembles a form that expresses the future
in neighboring languages.
>
> The forms he anat, has anat, etc. are used more or less as
> in Spanish: they indicate action within the current time
> frame, e.g. (avui, aquest any) he anat...
>
Ruud Harmsen
<h.mes...@comcast.net>: in sci.lang:
>Spanish has the same problem with the first person plural for regular first-
>and third-conjugation verbs, but so far that hasn't been sufficient impetus
>to drop the preterite. (The first conjugation forms are theoretically
>distinct in Portuguese: close "a" in present "falamos", open in preterite
>"falámos"; are there dialects of Portuguese where open and close "a" are no
>longer distinguished?)
Perhaps Northern-Portuguese, and Brazilian. I have no first-hand
confirmation of their not being distinguished in either case though.
Note that it is possible that a Portuguese accent does distinguish
these two sounds, but uses the same one in both "falamos" and
"falámos".
--
Ruud Harmsen - http://rudhar.com
Mxsmanic
> Webster.com lists the "urine us" pronunciation first.
Political correctness has forced that pronunciation into dictionaries
and mouths.
Mxsmanic
> If anything, I'm all for giving English an official sex-neutral pronoun;
> namely, by expanding the role of the one it already has: it. Can't it simply
> be thought of not as 'neither male nor female,' but 'uncertain?' We have
> plenty of gender-confused youth in America, so why can't we have a pronoun to
> refer to them?
I agree.
> I wonder what he thinks of PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol), often changed
> stupidly to P2P, which stands for 'person to person,' not P 'to' (=2) P!
> Stupid internetsprachen.
He was a computer manager and thus knew very little about computers; he
has probably never heard of PPP, if he still has a job.
Harlan Messinger
"Mxsmanic" <mxsm...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:l1k6j0138g9lfsvf8...@4ax.com...
> Nathan Sanders writes:
>
> > Webster.com lists the "urine us" pronunciation first.
>
> Political correctness has forced that pronunciation into dictionaries
> and mouths.
What a funny use of the term "political correctness". Besides that, I'm not
sure why a pronunciation with "urine" in it would be preferred over one with
"anus" in it.
Mxsmanic
> What a funny use of the term "political correctness". Besides that, I'm not
> sure why a pronunciation with "urine" in it would be preferred over one with
> "anus" in it.
I'm not sure why anyone would care either way.
Andrew Woode
> >
> > in Catalan you say:
> >
> > vaig anar, vas anar, va anar, vam anar, vau anar, van anar
>
> Yes, annoying as hell, since it resembles a form that expresses the future
> in neighboring languages.
>
I first encountered the form in Valencian death announcements (in
newspapers otherwise in Castilian). Very worrying, until we checked
the dates given relative to the newspaper's date of publication and
worked out
that the request to pray for the soul of X 'que va morir'
incorporated a report of a past event rather than a future threat...
Lynn Henderson
So, how did go + infinitive end up being used as a past tense in Catalan
then?
Peter T. Daniels
It just went and happened, that's all.
Bart Mathias
> "Mxsmanic" <mxsm...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:l1k6j0138g9lfsvf8...@4ax.com...
>
>>Nathan Sanders writes:
>>
>>
>>>Webster.com lists the "urine us" pronunciation first.
>>
>>Political correctness has forced that pronunciation into dictionaries
>>and mouths.
>
>
It extends the phenomenon further back in time than most people
association with the term. I've been saying "urine us" since the
mid-40s of a previous century.
I pronounce "Pisces" in a pseudosemantically synonymoous way. I'll
start saying "pie seas" the very same day I start calling them water
critters [fayS].
Bart Mathias
David Brandon Thomas
<h.mes...@comcast.net> writes:
I don't think either have any great stigma; my science teachers all said
YourAnus, except one who went with UrineUs, and that was probably because he
thought he was being proper, not because YourAnus sounds funny.
Gah... I'm so tempted to make a stupid joke over that last phrase.
Besides, you don't see anyone in America censoring the Prez and VP's names...
David Brandon Thomas
<mxsm...@hotmail.com> writes:
>David Brandon Thomas writes:
[trimmed all around]
>> If anything, I'm all for giving English an official sex-neutral pronoun;
>> namely, by expanding the role of the one it already has: it. Can't it
simply
>> be thought of not as 'neither male nor female,' but 'uncertain?' We have
>> plenty of gender-confused youth in America, so why can't we have a pronoun
>> to refer to them?
>I agree.
Indeed, I sort of miss the nuances English could contain if it had a more broad
set of pronouns. I mean, informal English has many different nouns that have
been promoted (or demoted, maybe) to pronoun status, primarily in a vocative
sense. Classic examples:
Baby, Dude, Chick, Dad and Mom seem overlooked, 'Man,' Girlfriend, Boy... all
over the place.
I'm in favor of expanding the pronoun repertoire, and making expressions in
different grammatical categories possible. Noone would ever say 'Dude stole my
car,' without adding a 'that,' though people might say 'Dad stole my car' (on
Jerry Springer?).
I always wondered if it would be possible to promote bringing back into
productiveness the affixes that English doesn't seem to use much anymore.
Anyone else in favor of reviving a rich derivational morphology in English, and
anyone on her more well-informed than I am have any great ideas?
Harlan Messinger
>Harlan Messinger wrote:
>> "Mxsmanic" <mxsm...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:l1k6j0138g9lfsvf8...@4ax.com...
>>
>>>Nathan Sanders writes:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Webster.com lists the "urine us" pronunciation first.
>>>
>>>Political correctness has forced that pronunciation into dictionaries
>>>and mouths.
>>
>>
>> What a funny use of the term "political correctness". [...]
>
>It extends the phenomenon further back in time than most people
>association with the term. I've been saying "urine us" since the
>mid-40s of a previous century.
That's not what I mean. There's nothing political about this question.
There's nothing about it that relates to politically-based
hypersensitivity.
>
>I pronounce "Pisces" in a pseudosemantically synonymoous way. I'll
>start saying "pie seas" the very same day I start calling them water
>critters [fayS].
I've never heard it pronounced any other way. The "correct" way would
be "peace case".
>
>Bart Mathias
--
Harlan Messinger
Remove the first dot from my e-mail address.
Veuillez ôter le premier point de mon adresse de courriel.
Peter T. Daniels
> Besides, you don't see anyone in America censoring the Prez and VP's names...
No, but they yield the useful slogan "Fuck Bush, Lick Dick!"
Bart Mathias
> Bart Mathias <bartm...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Harlan Messinger wrote:
>>
>>>"Mxsmanic" <mxsm...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>>>news:l1k6j0138g9lfsvf8...@4ax.com...
>>>
>>>
>>>>Nathan Sanders writes:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>Webster.com lists the "urine us" pronunciation first.
>>>>
>>>>Political correctness has forced that pronunciation into dictionaries
>>>>and mouths.
>>>
>>>
>>>What a funny use of the term "political correctness". [...]
>>
>>It extends the phenomenon further back in time than most people
>>association with the term. I've been saying "urine us" since the
>>mid-40s of a previous century.
>
> That's not what I mean. There's nothing political about this question.
> There's nothing about it that relates to politically-based
> hypersensitivity.
I caught your drift, and almost said it "also extends." I also almost
said "people *associate* with the term." Still, it seems to me that the
phrase is very often used with no real political reference nowadays.
>
>>I pronounce "Pisces" in a pseudosemantically synonymoous way. I'll
>>start saying "pie seas" the very same day I start calling them water
>>critters [fayS].
>
> I've never heard it pronounced any other way. The "correct" way would
> be "peace case".
Wouldn't that be the Greek, rather than the correct, way? (I kind of
wish they were the same, and I wouldn't have to smile when I say "Cuba"
or "Tokyo" etc. the way the residents do.)
I have always associated "piss ease" with astronomy and "pie seas" with
astrology.
Bart Mathias
David Brandon Thomas
writes:
[snip]
>I have always associated "piss ease" with astronomy and "pie seas" with
>astrology.
>
>Bart Mathias
I know it's unjustifiably wrong, but I always like saying [pi'SEz], just 'cause
it sounds like [fi'SEz].
Of course, that's *not* how I say "fishes," but it's fun anyhow.
David Brandon Thomas
<gram...@worldnet.att.net> writes:
Wouldn't that belong in the thread where I brought up gender confusion?
Perhaps I'm missing the political meanings.
And, wouldn't Cheney taste a bit salty? [i::ju:]
I, personally, say that's one Bush I won't be found fucking.
Harlan Messinger
Latin.
Why would the "correct" way be the way that is neither the original
way nor the way that anyone says it? As I said, *I* haven't heard
anyone say "piss ease".
> (I kind of
>wish they were the same, and I wouldn't have to smile when I say "Cuba"
>or "Tokyo" etc. the way the residents do.)
>
>I have always associated "piss ease" with astronomy and "pie seas" with
>astrology.
>
>Bart Mathias
J.D.F. Stone
[...]
> I'm in favor of expanding the pronoun repertoire, and making
> expressions in different grammatical categories possible. Noone
> would ever say 'Dude stole my car,' without adding a 'that,' though
> people might say 'Dad stole my car' (on Jerry Springer?).
Bitch set me up.
Dude set me up.
Dad set me up.
[...]
--
if this is fiction, then i wasted several hours
reading b.s. that i didn't need to. -- h3
Tom Breton
[...]
> Indeed, I sort of miss the nuances English could contain if it had a more broad
> set of pronouns. I mean, informal English has many different nouns that have
> been promoted (or demoted, maybe) to pronoun status, primarily in a vocative
> sense. Classic examples:
>
> Baby, Dude, Chick, Dad and Mom seem overlooked, 'Man,' Girlfriend, Boy... all
> over the place.
>
> I'm in favor of expanding the pronoun repertoire, and making expressions in
> different grammatical categories possible. Noone would ever say 'Dude stole my
> car,' without adding a 'that,' though people might say 'Dad stole my car' (on
> Jerry Springer?).
(1) A: "Why don't you like Jimmy?"
B: "Dude stole my car."
(2) "My girlfriend is psycho. Baby stole my car."
(3) "Her sister is psycho too. Chick torched my apartment."
All of these example feel like there's a dropped determiner there. I
believe that would be normal in this register. So I wouldn't go so
far as to say that these words have become pronouns or proper nouns.
(2) is a little different than the others, because "Baby" is
relational. (As used in (2)). That is, normally only the speaker's
own girlfriend would be called "baby" or referred to as "baby". Like
"Mom" or "Dad".
--
Tom Breton, the calm-eyed visionary
Bart Mathias
>>>[...] I'll
>>>>critters [fayS].
>>>
>>>I've never heard it pronounced any other way. The "correct" way would
>>>be "peace case".
>>
>>Wouldn't that be the Greek, rather than the correct, way?
>
> Latin.
Yeah. I have my bad days and my worse days...
> Why would the "correct" way be the way that is neither the original
> way nor the way that anyone says it? As I said, *I* haven't heard
> anyone say "piss ease".
That's an odd tangent. I for one certainly wouldn't propose such a
thing. "Pie seas" is a correct way, and the way I most often hear it;
it just sounds a little dumb to me, is all (as do the uses to which the
word is put).
And if Collegiate dictionaries' pronunciation guides are correct, I was
wrong about the Latin pronunciation--Webster's Ninth gives it. I look
forward to hearing it some time.
My primary source, Webster's Second Internation, lists *only* "piss
ease," and that's the one that is natural English given the spelling.
Times, at least some of them, change.
Bart Mathias
James Kanze
|> James Kanze writes:
|> > - the difference is NOT temporal, neither in English, nor in
|> > historical French -- in both cases, there would be a
|> > connection with the present if the compound tense were used,
|> > and
|> But very often that connection is one of proximity in time.
Coincidently, perhaps. However, the simple past will be used in English
even for events of five minutes ago, if there is no connection with the
present, and the compound past will be used for historical events, if
one is concerned about their effect on the present. Temporal
considerations are irrelevant.
|> > Apparently not.
|> I know them well enough to teach them, which is considerably better
|> than most people who merely speak and write the languages.
I wonder how well your pupils end up mastering them. If you teach them
that the English compound past is for recent events, and the simple past
for distant ones, then they will surely misuse it. And if you teach
them to use the simple past in everyday spoken French, even for very
distant events, their French will sound awkward and pedantic to a native
French speaker.
--
James Kanze
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James Kanze
|> So "Jules César a franchi le Rubicon" is a possible French sentence
|> (e.g. "En rentrant de sa campagne en Gaule, César a franchi le
|> Rubicon à la tête de ses légions").
What else would you say? You could use the narative present, but
something like "Jules César franchit le Rubicon" would sound pedantic in
spoken French.
James Kanze
|> Nath Rao wrote:
|> > For example, can one (with appropriate beliefs) say "Only once has
|> > the Son of God come to Earth"? Or does that remoteness in time
|> > rule that out?
|> 1. Jésus ne s'est incarné qu'une fois. (passé composé)
|> 2. Jésus ne s'incarna qu'une fois. (passé simple)
|> There is no difference I can feel.
I can. The second would sound pedantic in modern spoken French
(although I wouldn't be surprised to read it, or possibly to hear it in
a formal presentation).
But I think that Mr. Rao was asking about English. In which language
his sentence sounds perfectly normal; in fact, it can't imagine it using
the simple past.
|> The best I can think of is "tense agreement". You expect le passé
|> composé with other passés composés around it, le passé simple with
|> other passés simples around it.
There's that too.
James Kanze
|> Fr: Ils bâtirent les pyramides il y a des milliers d'années.
You'll never hear this from the mouth of a Frenchmen, unless he is
reading a formel paper.
Ils ont bâti les pyramides il y a des milliers d'années.
would be the normal form in modern spoken French.