Quote:
Originally Posted by Rusty
One thing I noted here, and thought I would bring to your attention, is that the book said the compound tenses are formed with the (past) participle. This can't be said for the (progressive), which uses a (present participle).
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My grammar book says
Quote:
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the compound tenses for all verbs are formed from the auxiliary verb haber followed by the past participle
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This is an interesting statement because I think it is ambiguous and the author is unaware of the ambiguity. I take it to mean
either
a)
We define compound tenses as those where verbs are formed from the
auxiliary verb haber followed by the
past participle
or
b) A compound tense is one where the verb is expressed by more than one word. In Spanish, all such all tenses are formed from the
auxiliary verb haber followed by the
past participle
This is where the lack of clarity arises, because text authors overlook this ambiguity. It is obvious to them that they mean a) and they can't see that a student might understand it as b)
This is called
Betriebsblindheit in German - you are so close to the material that you are unaware of your assumptions.
What do you think? Perhaps I'm labouring the point too much, but I do find gammar books very irritating in that they are full of such debatable points.
