Sitting versus Sat

Quote by DanielleX
Authors please note: 'Sat' is the simple past tense of the verb to sit. Therefore, you cannot write, 'I was sat on the chair reading for half an hour, before I decided to tear myself away and make a coffee.' In this sentence, it is necessary to use the present continuous form 'sitting.' Hence, 'I was sitting on the chair reading for half an hour, before I decided to tear myself away and make a coffee.'

This is known as the past progressive, i.e something that was ongoing in the past. In order to use 'sat' the above sentence would need to be written something like this: 'I sat on the chair and read for half an hour, before I decided to tear myself away and make a coffee.'


While using 'sitting; instead of 'sat' in conversation is 'okay', in writing, authors should strive to be grammatically correct.

Thanks

Danielle.

Quote by noll


Would "was sitting" (or "had been sitting") be more 'okay' if instead of "before I decided" one would write "when I decided"?

"I had been sitting on the chair reading for half an hour when I decided to tear myself away and make a coffee."


Though English and Dutch are quite related in many ways, some tenses work differently.

Quote by DanielleX



'I was sitting on the chair reading for half an hour, when I decided to tear myself away and make a coffee.' This is grammatically correct, but semantically different, although the difference is rather subtle. See below:

1. 'I was sitting on the chair reading for half an hour, before I decided to tear myself away and make a coffee.' This suggests that sitting reading the book and making the coffee are temporally discrete events. There's no connection implied from action A to action B.

2. I was sitting on the chair reading for half an hour, when I decided to tear myself away and make a coffee.' This sentence suggests that there was more of a sense of temporal continuity between the sitting and reading and making a coffee.


3. 'I had been sitting on the chair reading for half an hour, when I decided to tear myself away and make a coffee.' This is the past perfect progressive.

This means the same as sense 2 above, but would be more appropriate if the writer was using the plu perfect.

For example.

'On the Wednesday, it had rained all day and I decided to stay in. As a walk was out of the question, I opted to get stuck into the novel I had been promising myself for too long. I had been sitting on the chair reading for half an hour, when I decided to tear myself away and make a coffee.'

Hope this helps

Danielle.

Quote by noll


Not quite sure ;)

Nr. 3 (past perfect progressive) and your example of pluperfect are exactly the same except for adding an introduction in the latter. Should pluperfect not be "had sat"?

Quote by DanielleX


Not really. Had sat would be the past perfect tense. When I said pluperfect, I was referring more to the mood of the story, rather than the tense per se.

The way I was shown at uni was that the plu perfect in writing included mainly the perfect tense, which could include the past perfect progressive. Writing rarely uses a single tense.

I don't know anything about Dutch apart from pufferchuffers (sp?) and windmills, so not sure how it differs from English grammatically.

Quote by Wikipedia article on "Pluperfect" (Redirected from "Past perfect")
In English grammar, the equivalent of the pluperfect (a form such as "had written") is now often called the past perfect, since it combines past tense with perfect aspect.

Quote by noll


What are pufferchuffers?

Quote by DanielleX


Hard to describe, but will do my best. They're about 3cm across, kind of like airy pancakes. When we go to Amsterdam, they serve them hot with a dusting of icing sugar and a nob of butter. They're delicious.

D x

Quote by noll



Ah, "poffertjes", pronounce something like: 'pofferches' (IPA: ˈpɔfərcəs). Yeah, they seem to be typically Dutch. But in my 45 years here as a native I've only eaten them maybe 5 times

Quote by noll

Yeah, they seem to be typically Dutch. But in my 45 years here as a native I've only eaten them maybe 5 times

Quote by DanielleX
That's it!

Next time I'm over, I'm going to fill my suitcase and freeze them!

Yum

Quote by seeker4


One of those foods that tourists eat more than the natives, eh? There's probably Canadian examples but I can't think of one right now.

Quote by seeker4
One of those foods that tourists eat more than the natives, eh? There's probably Canadian examples but I can't think of one right now.

Quote by DanielleX
Authors please note: 'Sat' is the simple past tense of the verb to sit. Therefore, you cannot write, 'I was sat on the chair reading for half an hour, before I decided to tear myself away and make a coffee.' In this sentence, it is necessary to use the present continuous form 'sitting.' Hence, 'I was sitting on the chair reading for half an hour, before I decided to tear myself away and make a coffee.'

This is known as the past progressive, i.e something that was ongoing in the past. In order to use 'sat' the above sentence would need to be written something like this: 'I sat on the chair and read for half an hour, before I decided to tear myself away and make a coffee.'


While using 'sitting; instead of 'sat' in conversation is 'okay', in writing, authors should strive to be grammatically correct.

Thanks

Danielle.

Quote by LucaByDesign


Hi Danielle.

A good point, well made.

I'm no grammatician but I offer the following thoughts:

In fiction — particularly as practised on Lush — it depends on the voice a writer has chosen to give to their character/narrator. Very often they might want a conversational feel and so provide them with a breezy tone that reflects how they see the character speaking day-to-day.

But it is a distinction to keep in mind for more formal pieces.

Quote by DanielleX


Thank you, Luca.

I agree, if you're writing dialogue than it's fine to be more colloquial, but if you're writing narrative, it should be grammatically correct.

btw, it's grammarian

D x

Quote by DanielleX


Thank you, Luca.

I agree, if you're writing dialogue than it's fine to be more colloquial, but if you're writing narrative, it should be grammatically correct.

btw, it's grammarian

D x

Quote by DanielleX


Thank you, Luca.

I agree, if you're writing dialogue than it's fine to be more colloquial, but if you're writing narrative, it should be grammatically correct.

btw, it's grammarian

D x

Quote by LucaByDesign

Hi Danielle.

It begins with this post:

"Is the dialect expression “He was sat ...” in place of “He was sitting ...”, which is quite common in the UK, also found in US English? When I first arrived in England I was astonished to hear a teacher tell his class to “stay sat” when they had done whatever it was they were doing. Now it is like an epidemic, heard on the radio and television too, used by people speaking otherwise standard English. US dialect is very rich and diverting, but I wonder if this one features?"

H[ie sat on the ground
He stood on the grass
He flew in the aeroplane
He ran down the road

He sits on the ground
He stands at the corner
He flys in the aeroplane
He runs down the road

He was sitting on the ground
He was standing on the grass
He was flying in the aeroplane
He was running down the road

Above^ are the basics of standard English, as I was taught in school back in the 80s.

He was sat on the ground
He was stood on the grass
He was flew in the aeroplane
He was ran down the road

Above^ is the modern take on this modern "non-standard" slang grammar (which I wholeheartedly disagree with) . . . . .

As I said in my previous post, this non-standard form is now pervading the airwaves, and sadly the standard forms of sitting & standing (in particular)
seem to have been consigned to the grammatical dustbin. In generations to come people will look back and discover two words that will no
longer be in use in the English language, those words being sitting & standing.

Quote by LucaByDesign


<snip>

H[ie sat on the ground
He stood on the grass
He flew in the aeroplane
He ran down the road

He sits on the ground
He stands at the corner
He flys in the aeroplane
He runs down the road

He was sitting on the ground
He was standing on the grass
He was flying in the aeroplane
He was running down the road

Above^ are the basics of standard English, as I was taught in school back in the 80s.

He was sat on the ground
He was stood on the grass
He was flew in the aeroplane
He was ran down the road

</snip>

Quote by LikeToWrite




I'm like you and would have been bothered to hear that teacher tell his class to 'stay sat'. What worries me about things like this, is that those children will grow up thinking that is the proper way to speak and write. I have no idea how to stop the process, but it seems to me that after a generation or two, with each one pushing the boundaries of the language,

Hi, Liketowrite. Great of you to join the thread.

Yes, if you follow the link to the proofreading site where I lifted that quote from, that is the main concern of most posters, but which is not actually the point I was making, initially.

Pasted below, for convenience.

https://painintheenglish.com/case/4796/



it won't be long until the language becomes almost meaningless and impossible to understand what someone is saying. Even a simple error such as a misplaced or missing comma can give a sentence a different meaning. The rules are there for a reason.


But of course, language evolves. If it didn't we'd all be speaking like Shakespeare's characters. And where does the change well up from? Usually the streets — slang colloquialisms, foreign words, etc. You might find this extract from Steven Pinker's excellent book, The Sense of Style, of interest (But again, this does not relate to the point originally made about a narrator's voice). Here it is, anyhow.



W . . . What does it mean to say that it is incorrect to end a sentence with a preposition, or to use decimate to mean “destroy most of” rather than “destroy a tenth of”? After all, these are not logical truths that one could prove like theorems, nor are they scientific discoveries one could make in the lab. And they are certainly not the stipulations of some governing body, like the rules of Major League Baseball. Many people assume that there is such a governing body, namely the makers of dictionaries, but as chair of the Usage Panel of the famously prescriptive American Heritage Dictionary (AHD), I am here to tell you that this assumption is false. When I asked the editor of the dictionary how he and his colleagues decide what goes into it, he replied, “We pay attention to the way people use language.” That’s right: when it comes to correct English, there’s no one in charge; the lunatics are running the asylum. The editors of a dictionary read a lot, keeping their eyes open for new words and senses that are used by many writers in many contexts, and the editors add or change the definitions accordingly. Purists are often offended when they learn that this is how dictionaries are written.




A book is well worth a look at if you're an aspiring writer.


He was sat on the ground
He was stood on the grass
He was flew in the aeroplane
He was ran down the road


The first two lines sound fine to me. The second two grate on the nerves. So if American's and others also got the same sensation from the first two examples, I can well understand their chagrin. I use the first two examples all of the time — like the air I breathe, had never had to think about their use until Danielle started this thread.


I'

Quote by LucaByDesign




Hi Danielle.

I'm probably defending the use of "sat" as I'm a working-class bloke from the north North of England. It's how we speak up 'ere.

Quote by kiteares

Why would you write
He was sitting on the ground
when you can write
He sat on the ground
saving yourself 7 whole letters.
One of the big complaints from one of my American friends is the amount of letter we waste with our extra 'U's and 'L's.

'By 'eck' North or 'wai eye' North? Just to confuse our cousins a little more ;)

Quote by curvygalore


I rather like grammologist or maybe grammographer?

Quote by DanielleX


He was sitting on the ground and he sat on the ground are different tenses and can mean different things depending on the sentence.

'When I first met him, he was sitting on the ground.'

'When I first met him, he sat on the ground.'

These mean different things.

D x