Re: Story - TCOAIW

En réponse à Adrian Morgan <morg0072@...>:

>
> I'm not sure what you mean. A search shows eight instances of words
> ending in apostrophe-d, including five in the first scene, which is
> not surprising as this scene describes events that occur before the
> story begins which naturally incurs the use of the past perfect. This
> proportion is by no means unusual for fictional or other types of
> non-formal prose. I'm surprised that you find it awkward; expanding
> it to "he had", etc would look inappropriately formal, IMO.
>
Well, I'm only a L2 English speaker, but I agree with Teoh that this 'd looks
awkward. First, it's an ambiguous abbreviation (it can be "had" or "would", and
somehow I consider it is more often "would" than "had", so I tend to translate
it as "would", and only when I see the next word I realise my mistake, so it
tends to break my reading pace). Then, it's an abbreviation used in a
narrative, and whether it's a formal narrative or not, it just looks plain
wrong to me. To me, this kind of abbreviation is fit for transcribing spoken
language, or for informal written communication like letters or e-mail to
friends or acquaintances. For a narrative organised in chapters (thus a "book",
whether it's on paper or not), it just doesn't fit. It's just way too informal.
And having "had" itself doesn't sound formal to me at all. It just sounds
neutral.

It's all equivalent to the use of 'ne' (the first part of any negation in
standard French) in French. In spoken French, it's just never used. And in
informal letters or email, it's not used either, because those things tend to
imitate spoken language. But a narrative is not supposed to imitate spoken
language (unless it's made on purpose, to give us the impression that the
narrator is actually telling us the story), but rather to use a standard
written language, and in French this written language includes using "ne". In
the same way, I feel the use of those abbreviations in English just doesn't fit
in a narrative, and it seems Teoh had the same impression.

What do you find formal in just writing "had" instead of 'd? I personally never
abbreviate 'had' in my speech either (although I do abbreviate "would" to 'd
very often) and yet no native speaker of English has ever said I was too formal.

>
> Anyway, I thought people on Conlang might like see this.
>
It seems nice anyway. I'm quite interested in the story. Keep up the good work!

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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