As I’ve watched some so-called “educational” shows on TV, I’ve noticed that the tendency among academics to use the historical present has become dire. The English language is under attack from ignoramuses who, in the putative interest of “style”, are clouding the very clarity of expression that makes English such a glorious (if difficult) language.
“So….it would seem <muses some talking head> that Lincoln goes to the Cabinet, discusses his frustrations with McClellan, and then what does he do? He returns home and puts it out of his mind for the night.”
No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no.
Abraham Lincoln has been dead since 1865. He doesn’t do anything now. He doesn’t go anywhere now. He doesn’t return home anymore. Lincoln went to the Cabinet. He discussed his frustrations, then he returned home. This all happened in the past.
English is well served with fine, precise verb tenses. The Greeks had their aorist for point-like past events (those things that happened as a single event, without any connotation of sustained length) and their imperfect for events which happened in the past but can be thought of as extended over a period of time, the so-called linear aspect. There is a perfect tense for events which began in the past but have extended into the present, often described as punctilinear. There is a pluperfect tense which keeps it all in the past, allows it a sustained length, but gives it a definite ending. Hell, you can even pop in a future perfect that adds a certain conditionality to the whole shebang. (“When Gustavus IV reaches his 89th birthday later this month, he shall have had control over the government for more than twenty years.”) (I believe that last sentence uses a future pluperfect. Such fun.)
English has its own share of subtleties of aspect, although English verbs lack the singularly arresting subtleties of aspect so easily captured in Greek. Nonetheless, English can express temporal aspect beautifully.
“Shut up,” he said.
The Greeks could use some of their tenses with imperatives like that. For example, “Shut up” in the imperfect indicates that the shutting up is expected to take place across a full linear span of time. However, if you put “Shut up” in the aorist, it means SHUT UP: shut up now, forever, don’t ever, and there is absolutely no time element involved. (It’s the grammatical equivalent of enforcing the “shut up” command with a blackjack to the noggin.) You can even put it in the future–i.e., don’t start not-shutting-up at any point; shut up right away and stay shut up.
“I have shut up,” he answered.
There’s a nice perfect tense for you; he began to shut up in the past and continues to shut up in the present.
“You had shut up, then you stopped shutting up!” came the exasperated reply.
Pluperfect tense–a point (beginning to shut up) continued in a linear fashion (stayed shut up) and then, still in the past, the action ceased.
“You will shut up!” he went on to say.
This is a future tense, but used in a kind of imperative sense. You aren’t shutting up right now, but you will be shutting up. The aspect here, though, is not so much of future as it is of intensifying the sentiment.
But what happens if I write: “Lincoln shuts up”? Is this a point, is it linear, is it punctilinear, is there a perfect aspect or pluperfect aspect, what??
The present tense is wishy-washy about verb aspect, both in Greek and English. If you say “he goes to the store” you could mean that he “is going” to the store, but you could also be referring to the action in a much more punctual way–the “going” is without any sense of duration, beginning, or end.
And, mirabile dictu, it is possible for “he goes to the store” to refer to something that happened in the past, the so-called “historical present”.
In short, the use of the present in the place of more expressive verb tenses robs language of some of its meaning, and a great deal of its precision.
Consider: “After having gone to the Cabinet in order to discuss his frustrations with McClellan, Lincoln returned home.” Now we have more precision: the verb tenses themselves help to place the various temporal elements: “having gone” is perfect tense, with a strong linear sense of duration; “to discuss”, although an infinitive, picks up the perfect tense from the main verb (in Greek it would actually be in the perfect). The we get an aorist “Lincoln returned home”–i.e., an event firmly placed in the past.
The situation becomes even more fraught (at least for me) when these same talking heads begin mixing the historical present with standard past-tense verb formations freely.
“Lincoln had gone to the Cabinet in order to discuss his frustrations with McClellan. And then what does he do? He goes home!”
This isn’t stylish. It’s plain old bad English, the sort of thing that should get one red marks on an essay paper. But you hear it all the time.
Humphf. Let there be (aorist imperative, no temporal aspect, only pure imperative) a pox on those who befog their meaning with slipshod verb tenses.