Which word would be appropriate for use in this sentence? Why?

Fossils of land-dwelling mammals were found on both continents, although these mammals could not have (swam, swum) across the ocean.
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11-01-02, 04:54 PM
maiku
The correct form here is swum.

The simple past form swam occurs as the main verb in an English sentence only when there is no auxilliary verb in the verb phrase. In the sentence you ask about, the auxilliary verb have occurs, demanding the past participle form swum.

Why? Because that's how English verb phrases work. You should no more say "I have swam in the ocean off Cape Cod" than you would say "I have was there." But confusions like these are easily forgiven, because there has been much variation in acceptable past and past participle forms of "strong verbs" like swim in the history of English.

11-01-02, 04:58 PM
cattywampus
Oddly, my dictionary is no help at all here. Swam and Swum are forms of "swim" of course, and it seems to me either could be used here, but I favor "swum."

Maiku?

Catty (who is on shaky ground here) eek roll eyes confused

11-01-02, 06:10 PM
Johnny Velo
I have a heck of a time trying to figure out which to use. Lie, lay-hang, hung, hanged-and a few more that I can't think of right now.

11-01-02, 06:30 PM
juanruiz

quote:Originally posted by Johnny Velo:
I have a heck of a time trying to figure out which to use. Lie, lay-hang, hung, hanged-and a few more that I can't think of right now.



Lie is what you do to yourself...lay is what you do to other things. I'm going to lie down. I'm going to lay the sheets on the table. Hung is what happens to clothes. Hanged is what what happened to people. And Maiku is exactly right about swam/swum.

11-01-02, 07:22 PM
MkStfnz
Thanks, everyone.

Maiku, your explanation was perfect.

Juan- not only are you helpful resource for Spanish, but you're equally as for English. Thanks!

11-01-02, 07:36 PM
maiku
I sympathize strongly with Johnny Velo's problems with verb forms in English. You are not alone if you also aren't sure, at times.

Some of the problems have to do with the variability in so-called strong verbs in the history of English, as I pointed out above. Strong verbs are those which change their tense by what linguists know of as "ablaut." Sing/sang/sung, for example, has remained pretty stable, while climb/clamb/clumb has been entirely regularized to climb/climbed/climbed. But some of the older forms persist here and there in various dialects, so that even today in some parts of the country (USA) people are said to have "clumb" up a tree.

The most prolific confusion I know of is with the verb "wake." In questionnaires I myself once circulated, the "preterite" of this verb, in actually recorded usage, included: wake,woke,woken,woked,waked,awaked,awakened, awoken, awokened, and probably some others I've forgotten about.

The confusion of the intransitive verb lie with transitive lay is a somewhat different, but related problem. Both of them are "strong" verbs already, which only adds to the confusion. Practically nobody gets their usage right, Velo, so don't be ashamed. Clearly, English would be better off without irregular verbs of any kind, and historically the movement has been in favor of eliminating them.

The complexity of verb declensions in English is paltry, though, as compared to that of the Romance languages, or even of German. I give up when it comes to keeping the tenses of Spanish verbs straight.

The verb hang is a very, very peculiar one. Juan Ruiz is right about it. With one exception I can think of. I'm not sure if the AP rules will allow me to refer here to the old joke about the plastic surgeon who hung himself.

[This message was edited by maiku on 11-01-02 at 07:54 PM.]

11-01-02, 07:55 PM
juanruiz
Uh, Maiku, I purposefully avoided mentioning that use of hung.

11-02-02, 03:42 AM
Ewood27
I don't know if this is purely a UK distinction - possible since hanging was our method of legal execution until the death penalty was abolished - but to be hanged is as a result of legal process. A suicide by that method would be said to have hung himself, and the victim of a lynch mob would be said to have been hung.

11-02-02, 03:23 PM
juanruiz
The only real trick with Spanish strong preterites is to remember the irregular stem, the endings, whether the infinitive be -ar, -er, or -ir are identical:
-e
-iste
-o
-imos
-isteis
-ieron
The only exceptions being ir and ser, which have the same forms and stems ending with the letter j, for which the /i/ of the 3rd pers pl is dropped.

11-02-02, 03:53 PM
maiku
For native speakers of English who are already troubled by our vastly simplified verb conjugations, your rules for Spanish preterites, Juan, could be somewhat daunting, to say the least. Also, you are cheating here slightly by neglecting to mention that Spanish, like other Romance languages, actually has two past tense forms, where English, progressive language that it is, manages to get by with only one.

11-02-02, 03:57 PM
juanruiz
Granted, English is lacking a distinct simple past for imperfective aspect, but makes up for it with three replacements: the past progressive for on-going events, and used to and would for habitual events. BTW, there are only three irregular Spanish verbs in the imperfect.

11-03-02, 11:07 PM
Johnny Velo
Gracias, Juan ahora me voy a orcar, Just Joking, now.

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