Reginald Foster's translation of the Perfect Tense

Latin
1

On page 75 of Laura Pooley’s Ossa Ostensa (based on Reginald Foster’s teaching) the perfect tense (“T4a”) dixi is given the following definitions (not including the simple past uses, which are given under “T4b”:

I have spoken
I have been speaking

Is the second of these correct? As I understand it (based on Allen and Greenough 466), the present tense with iam, iam dudum, adhuc, etc. would be used for the English present perfect continuous tense.

E.g. (from A&G):

Iam diū īgnōrō quid agās. (Fam. 7.9) For a long time I have not known what you were doing.

Tē iam dūdum hortor. (Cat. 1.12) I have long been urging you.

Patimur multōs iam annōs. (Verr. 5.126) We suffer now these many years.

Annum iam audīs Cratippum. (Off. 1.1) For a year you have been a hearer of Cratippus.

The same thing is found in Gary Coulter’s notes on Foster’s teaching, where one of the definitions of vidi is given as “I have been seeing.”

Is this a post classical usage? Was Foster mistaken here? Or has A&G not been comprehensive enough?

2

I think you’re right to question this. “I have been speaking” etc. would normally suggest that the activity is still ongoing, and that would be present tense in Latin, as also in Greek and modern European languages. Dixi can correspond to “I spoke” (Gk. aorist) and to “I have spoken” (Gk. perfect), but it’s hard to think of a context where it corresponds to “I have been speaking.” I imagine Foster was just trying to make the point that the Latin perfect admits of a variety of translations in English, but he shouldn’t have extended it so far.

3

Thank you. The same thing happens with the pluperfect also. Thus, for videramus, Pooley gives (p. 75) “we had seen” and “we had been seeing.”

This again seems contrary to A&G (470), which states that the imperfect is used in this construction. It provides the following examples:

Iam dūdum flēbam. (Ov. M. 3.656) I had been weeping for a long time.

cōpiās quās diū comparābant (Fam. 11.13.5) the forces which they had long been getting ready

I’m going to have to go back and recheck my understanding of and notes on the sequence of tenses, as I allowed my conceptions of it to be influenced a few years ago while reading Foster’s Ossa, but now I’m questioning whether he was right.

Thus, Ossa Latinitatis Sola, p. 314. For

nescimus quid fecerint

he has:

We do not know what:
they did
they did do
they have done
they have been doing
they had done
they had been doing
they were doing
they used to do
they would do

Basically, any present tense subjunctive in indirect question would represent any present or future verb (with any aspect), and any perfect subjunctive would represent any verb anterior to the main verb, irrespective of aspect.

I had assumed he was correct and that my textbooks and grammars had oversimplified things. Now I’m not so sure. Perhaps he is right here though, since in Latin there are only two options for each verb, based on tense, not aspect (e.g. in primary sequence, only the present or perfect tense can be used, which is of course decided by the tense of the verb in the main clause).

4

I’m merely an intermediate Latin student, but yes this is covered by the Latin perfect. The perfect tense in Latin includes both the Perfect Definite (what has been completed) and the Historical/Aorist Perfect (what has taken place at some undefined point in the past). This is absolutely a classical usage, and is present in, for example, Cicero (among many others). At the risk of sounding catty, this can be confirmed by perusing any number of available Latin grammars. I’m not sure why Foster in particular is singled out here.

“I have been speaking” does not imply an ongoing action in English, it implies an action that was ongoing at some point in the past that is temporally-related to the present moment (else “I spoke” would suffice). The primary distinction here, then, is between a single event in the past that is finished, or a sequence in time originating in the past that has led up to the present (but is nonetheless completed). “I wrote you a letter” vs “I have written you a letter”. In the former I wrote a letter at some point in the past, and that past action has no connection to the now. In the latter it implies an action that occurred in the past that has a temporal connection to the present.

Temporal sequencing is key to understanding the perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect. In all the cases other than the Perfect Definite we’re ordering the action in relation to something else in time: in the pluperfect one action is completed prior to another in the past, and in the future perfect one action is completed before another at some point in the future (else we’d just use the simple future). In the Aorist Perfect we’re saying the action occurred before the present.

5

“I have been writing you a letter …” is not the same as “I have written you a letter.”

Again, see Allen and Greenough 466

6

Ignore this I completely misunderstood you

7

I finally understand your question!

8

I’ve studied under Foster’s method - somewhat, and not primarily - and he absolutely attests that T4b includes the continuous present. I have only seen it used in the construction you show in A&G with the use of words like “iam”. I cannot attest to any historical usage from my own reading. My guess is that it’s classical but early, but that’s not something I can confirm from anything I have at hand.

9

he absolutely attests that T4b includes the continuous present

Yes, I assumed he did, because both Pooley and Coulter–independently of each other, but they are both former students–make the same claim about the present perfect continuous, which is not to my knowledge found in any other non-Reginaldian textbook.

I have only seen it used in the construction you show in A&G with the use of words like “iam”. I cannot attest to any historical usage from my own reading.

I’d suggest it’s because it doesn’t exist. As above, I’ve never seen it in a single grammar outside of those of Foster and his students.

My guess is that it’s classical but early, but that’s not something I can confirm from anything I have at hand.

I don’t think you’ll be able to confirm that T4b [=the present perfect tense] includes, in Latin, the perfect continuous tense. I cannot have the confidence that Foster must be right, and that therefore it must have existed somewhere, sometime, especially since he was, without doubt, absolutely wrong on the sequence of tenses, which I’ve delved into and re-examined since my initial post here, as I had assumed that Foster was a Latin expert and I rather took his Ossa at face value when I read it five years ago or so. I should have been more discerning, especially since there was other quirky stuff in the book (off the top of my head, his insistence that the gerundive wasn’t a future passive participle denoting necessity but an adjectival form of the gerund–whatever that means).

The idea that nescimus quid fecerint can be represented with the translation: “we do not know what they will have done” (p. 314 where he has “have thought” instead of “have done,” presumably by mistake), is wrong, seriously wrong. Either that or he has the truth and every other textbook and grammar have the sequence of tenses wrong.

He has misread, I think, Gildersleeve and Lodge’s description of the sequence of tenses. I also think the same misreading is likely the source of his error concerning the present perfect continuous tense as well, as this tense is given as one of the possible translations of the perfect subjunctive in primary sequence (since the perfect subjunctive can represent any tense, perfect or continuous, that takes place prior to the main verb). You won’t find any grammar, anywhere, by anyone, who would support Foster’s sequence of tenses (given in a diagram on page 309).

The perfect subjunctive in primary sequence can only represent a tense anterior to
the verb in primary sequence. It can’t represent a “future completed” (p. 309) taking place after that verb.

Likewise, the pluperfect subjunctive in secondary sequence can only represent a tense prior to that of the main verb, not one that is “future completed” to it.

So it’s not hard for me to believe his grasp of the Latin tense system was eccentric, as he was. He always comes across as dismissive of everyone else, of thinking he knows more and knows better. Well, maybe he was the one who was mistaken.