question about English grammar

I never heard him come in,...means there was a particular event which the speaker failed to hear.

I have never heard him come in....does not refer to any particular unheard event...he may have come in several times or not at all.

In the case where the hearing consists of a particular piece of music say (not an event) only the second form is strictly acceptable.

Compare

I ran the race/ I have never run the race....no ambiguity this time because the past participle takes a different form.

I do reason, at the same time, however, that we will eventually find this structural usage grammatically incorrect. The reason being, primarily, that his 'coming in' is forced by pragmatic instance to have been a single event. (otherwise we would expect a number of entries which could (thinkably) continue to the present to present even) In this case, therefore, it would be preferrable to use simple past tense:

I didn't hear him come in.

However, I am aware of a common ellipsis having been possibly modeled here (or copied, sort of), as one might find in 'gotta go now. (the 've of (I've) being dropped) Still, I can't seem to let this one go by so easily; I still take this as being incorrect usage, and not to be encouraged. (that's my take)

So you are saying "never heard" is a stylistically aberrant equivalent of "did not hear" ?

In single sentence grammar you may have a point, but in discourse analysis in which the concept of grammar extends beyond a sentence, "never heard" can viewed as a reply to the implicit question "did you hear ?"

Appreciate your come back, fresco; and yes, I'm taking that position.

While no one could disagree on what could be determined from discourse analysis (pragmatics) [and, just in case, my use of the phrase 'pragmatic instance' in my last post had not been referring to the linguistics] in this regards, we can, as you have noticed, judge the 'slip' into this usage, as having been a breach of rather set norms of grammar. Of course, since language is fluid, it happens; and at times may actually improve communication.

Allowing me to go a bit further, if I may, I'd argue here that in that the OP specifically asks about past perfect's being usable as an alternative (as I take it) to simple past, I would always stress the point that such is simply poor grammar. (and I think you have provided a good example, actually, in your second post)

A: I never run that race yesterday.

Sentence A, above, is simply poor grammar--and, IMHO, just being lazy with the language. (and we should be careful [and for those of us who teach especially] to discourage such)

B: I never ran that race yesterday.

B, of course, presents no problem at all. The speaker in signifying that an intention to act (regardless of its intrinsic strength) had not been fulfilled. Here, we could expect a question such as 'Did you ever run that race yesterday?' where we'd never expect 'Have you ever ran that race yesterday?,' and '(Did) you ever ran that race yesterday?' is, again, simply lazy language.

We will, as you have also pointed out, find problems with verbs which don't inflect between simple past form and perfect participle form, yet I argue that we should strive to more clearly maintain usage distinction. Therefore, I would always argue against allowing present perfect to be used in place of simple past.

thank you all for responding!
KaseiJin, i was wodering if i can say " i never heard him come in " is a right sentence
thank you

You are welcome, for whatever degree I could be of help, westwind. Now your question above, however, is kind of a problem, but I will give it my best answer--and then maybe fresco can add to, or adjust that, some.

I'll say here (as fresco has basically pointed out earlier) that we'll need a contextual setting to really make a fair, pragmatic judgment. That said, I will always stand up for the conviction that the sentence style should never have been allowed to have developed. Alas, I guess such is the way of the world.

To make my point, if I may, here (and please take this as an expression of my concern for your learning process, westwind) the formulation of your question, is, in fact questionable from this perspective.

I was wondering if/whether I can say X is a right sentence?

This question would seem to imply that a degree of uncertainty is in the mind of the speaker (holding it to be an honest question). While the sentence itself, in this case (maybe especially) is not incorrect, or anything (really), I would still suggest that the following sentence would better fit the held-in-mind (or at least nuanced) acknowledgement of uncertainty:

I was wondering if/whether I could say X would be a right sentence.

So, here we have it. The final answer would surely be that there is room for such, but that it might be better to take care with these things. It should be kept in mind (I would like to kind of humorously point out) that the pen is mightier than the sword!

It's perfectly grammatical and it's in common use. This 'never' does not relate to time, as in, "I've never been to Spain". It's meaning #2, below, is emphatic:

=================
M-W:
Main Entry: nev·er

Function: adverb

1 : not ever : at no time <I never met her>
2 : not in any degree : not under any condition <never the wiser for his experience>

====================



First, Westwind, the underlined is not the Past Perfect. [It's not really even a tense unto itself but that for another time and place] It's the Present Perfect, [present tense, perfect aspect].

The present perfect performs four basic pragmatic functions in English plus at least one that signifies higher register.

The one where the present perfect most often conveys the same meaning as the simple past is the present perfect of current relevance/importance/hot news. [This describes NaE. For Bre there are some difference]]

Damn, I've cut my thumb versus Damn, I cut my thumb.

I've been to Spain versus I went to Spain.

Where have you been?! versus Where did you go?

Even for the present perfect of experience, where the intent usually signifies a long period of time, 'ever', as in, Have you ever ... ?, we find the simple past being used. This normally happens in casual speech.

Did ya ever ski/scuba dive/go to London/eat sushi/meet a movie star/... ?

I challenge the modifier in bold, while of course acknowledging the accuracy of the following adjective. While all dictionaries will be prescriptive, we must not lose sight of the fact that they are also descriptive. Of course the use of 'never' in the sentence is emphatic usage, and is common enough, yet those two things alone will not, and ought not, allow us to write off an untrue formulation quite so easily.

I honestly both reason and feel that we should not give out blank checks quite so easily.

Hello KaseiJin. My modifier, 'perfectly' was emphatic too. It wasn't really needed, I agree. Something just has to be grammatical to be grammatical.

I don't quite get what you're driving at with,

"yet those two things alone will not, and ought not, allow us to write off an untrue formulation quite so easily.

I honestly both reason and feel that we should not give out blank checks quite so easily."

Thank you for taking the time to respond. Let me firstly apologize because at the time of posting, I had actually been under a bit of a time squeeze; and didn't express myself quite well enough.


It may be the case that this statement turns out to be 'Y' in the road for us--so to speak--leading to different views of the same area. I would tend more often than not, to reject, or at least frown on, the notion of allowing too much rein in drifting from more formal sentence formulation; it's just me . I'd think that you may have caught it in my posts here, but while trying to be honest with my answers and suggestions, I also make any effort to argue for a more formal style. (of course the drawback here, is that we don't have any context to go by at all, and formal language might not have fit the context at all)



'Badly worded,' would be the best way to describe that! (hee, hee, hee....) In short, and, hopefully, clearer wording, I think it less preferable to allow sentence formulations simply because a particular formulation is, and or can, be used. I say this, however, with more than just the linguistic medium (here, English) in mind, but with considerations for other things as well (e.g. non-verbal based logic, gender considerations, etc.)

My reason for challenge, therefore, was due to my position that the sentence fragment (I never simple past verb form) is grammatically incorrect at the end of the day. I wouldn't think it worth making any further ado over, however . . . that's just my position. . . but always suggest those who ask, to use 'at all,' or in some cases, 'even.'

I didn't even . . .

I didn't . . . at all.

Thank you for responding. No need for any apologies. The posts hang here pretty well. Sometimes some don't get to asking about something until months later.



I can't see how this can be, KaseiJin. Grammaticality isn't a matter of degrees, or at least I don't think that it is. In what way do you see "I never ..." as being ungrammatical?

Gottcha, JTT, thanks. (from time to time I just kind of pop in, to see what's up, and don't personally have time to really make a decent post, but emotionally feeling that I do have enough time, rush one anyway, and not do a good job on it at all--that's what had happened.)

First of all, in being honest, I have to admit that by not being as careful as I should, I have kind walked out on some thin ice. There is a certain range of the formulation under concern (specifically, 'never + simple past') which I hold to be grammatically incorrect, and some which I do not.

While keeping my earlier posts in mind, such as this one here, I'll try to present where I draw tend to draw the line (and I wouldn't try to deny that perhaps I'm being a bit overly 'hard lined' here, or that my range of application [ working with Japanese students] may be on the narrower side, or might not be so strictly a matter of grammar, per se, even):

Never, being the negative of ever, is primarily applicable to a time element; an expression of open-ended time. I would hold the following formulation to be grammatically incorrect:

She ever drove the kids to soccer practice yesterday, so it's my turn today.

The sentence is obviously presenting a specific event, and using 'ever' there is unnatural. While we could use 'never' in the manner of my post linked to above, in the context of the formulation here, I hold it ungrammatical to formulate it as: She never drove the kids to soccer practice yesterday when there is no unfulfilled intention being communicated. I would always suggest 'She didn't drive the kids to soccer practice yesterday. I would apply the same for 'I never heard him come in.'

Another fault of mine, however, which I have caught this morning, is that I may have taken the OP text too literally--taking it to have been asking when past perfect tense equates simple past tense, instead of when either can be used. (of course, I don't really know which might be the case)

Anyway, JTT, I do hope this explains my position; not that I might expect you to agree, of course, but if you teach EFL, I would still urge it.

Good morning, afternoon or evening as the case applies, KaiseiJin.

I don't believe there's any reason to teach ESL/EFl in a manner that isn't consistent with the English language. This 'never', in the OP's original,

'I never heard him come in.'

is not an expression of open ended time. It is an adverbial emphatic, an intensifier, as I noted in my first post. It's roughly equivalent to,

I really didn't hear him come in.

So while the normal neutral could easily be seen as,

'I didn't hear him come in',

it simply doesn't say the same thing as the emphatic 'never'.

It's kind like 'desu yo' or even a zo.

The following uses of 'never' with the simple past tense are grammatically correct:

1. When I was young, I entered many competitions but never won.
2. He visited our house over twenty times but never spoke to me.
3. I kept trying to contact her, but she was never in.
4. Never at any time during the incident did anyone call the police.

JTT, ACB, apologies for getting back late; 'tis that time of the year, when busy-ness gets even busier.

Thanks for the explanations and examples. I think we'll find that we are simply in slightly different 'camps' on this one, and, actually (as mentioned before) the teaching does very possibly kind of force it. I wish to point out, nevertheless, that I am tempering my position on this, therefore please do keep that in mind as well.

The base word 'ever' is without doubt an adverb of frequency which leaves time open; in other words it represents time itself, in need of further delimiters. Additionally, 'never' is, for a fact, its negative form. Now in that the word never has come to have a number of applications, we can have a number of usages. (which I do understand, and which I take as the position being offered) I do not deem it necessary, if any pragmatic enough reason supports such, to condone all and any such usages simply because they are.

In reasoning on this, we can proceed with the following:

In taking the question form: Do you play the piano?, we can deduce that the questioner will most likely not know of the second person's having any ability to play the piano, and yet, the matter of ability is not in the question, per se (because we do not necessarily have that nuance with the simple present; as seen in the auxillary usage 'Can you play ... ').

In taking the question form: Do you ever play the piano?, we can deduce that the questioner will most likely know of (to whatever degree of veracity) the second person's having the ability to play, and is merely wishing to have the frequency of playing determined. There are a number of possible responses ranging from 100% of the time, down to 0% of the time; but the pure negation of the question would be, simply, 'No, I never play the piano.' This response specifically indicates that over the expansion of the flow of time from some point in time, up to the moment of speaking, that speaker has not played the piano a single time, or, in a more relaxed emotional take, very, very seldom does . . . where that person would not consider that much to be 'really' playing.

Then, in shifting to simple past tense, we can start with the question, Did you play the piano?, and almost instantly react with the follow up question of 'When?' The simple past carries no time period denotation (other than past), and thus most usually needs a specific time identifier--which regardless of being a point in time or a block in time, will carry the emotional content of being a point in time. In the event that context is not given, or not firstly acknowledged by both parties, the specific time point should be provided in the question...preferably. (Did you play the piano at the gig Saturday? Additionally, we can deduce that the questioner is aware of the ability of the second person.

Here, in this particular circumstantial setting, it would be arguably awkward to expect the question form, 'Did you ever play the piano at the gig Saturday?,' without deducing that the questioner had known of the intention or desire of the second person to play the piano at that particular gig on that particular Saturday, and was then trying to verify whether the intention or desire had been accomplished, or fulfilled. For this reason, the response, 'No. I never played' (as in, I did not get a chance to play) can be seen as a fitting formulation.

Then, in the absence of the immediately above formulation of having previously had a desire or intention to act (and any question tending to verify such), if we were to have the questioner ask a different person the following, Did you ever hear Joe play the piano on Saturday, we would most arguable have an awkward formulation. We could imagine that other party responding with something like, 'You mean to ask me if I heard Joe play the piano on Saturday, right? No, I did not hear Joe play the piano on Saturday. Here, is one key point I wish to make. By not using the contracted form (and the negative requires the use of the auxiliary) we can fully enough add both emphasis and emotional content. We do not need to force the use of the negative adverb of frequency (and I am not, more specifically, arguing it ungrammatical in a final absolute sense)

OH boy...now I have not fully developed my argument, and the time is gone....

ACB I have no problem with the sentences you have provided, if we inpsect them carefully, because they are all perfect nuanced; each one of them can be fully and correctly shifted to past perfect tense. The sentence 'I heard him come in' can not be shifted to a perfect sense simply because of the information...a person came in, and that is a single act at a single specific point in time. Likewise, our 'I never heard Joe play the piano on Saturday' can not be shifted to a perfect formulation--in that Saturday, due to the simple past formulation, has become a single point in time--and thus is not fitting for the adverb of frequency. Why not keep the better 'I did not hear Joe play the piano on Saturday,' to show that emotional tag? For learners of English in Japan, it'll make it a lot easier to understand the relation of 'ever' to simple present formulation, to equally maintain the same balance for its negative form, namely, never.

I thus hold it usage in some simple past formulations to be non-grammatical in nature (and this is tempered, of course [please check my earlier posts]) OH....TIME'S UP !! Sorry....

Konnichiwa/Kombanwa as the case may be, Kasei Jin.

This, I believe, is where you are mistaken. What exists in language exists for a reason, and to not accept legitimate examples of usage, especially when there isn't any valid reason to not accept them, is simply, how can I phrase this, unacceptable, counterproductive, ... , I need a better word, but it eludes me at the moment.



I've seen the damage done in Japan by following such thinking. It's never simpler in the long run to deceive students by withholding needed information. Needed I say because, inevitably, students have to function in the real world of language, not just in some made up course designed to help them pass junior high/ senior high/university entrance exams.

There are many words that have more than one meaning. Even "yeah right" can mean "no, wrong". You said that you understand the difference between the two nevers, and I suspect you do. In the one that's under discussion, it is not the negative form of ever. It has no connection to ever in these situations and there are a lot of them in use in everyday English.

"I never" is colloquially equivalant to "I didn't" but it's not grammatical, imho.

It's an error, a slang shorthand.

never ever didnt do