voodoo_child wrote:Hey Ashley,
Can you please help me to understand this ?
Arlene wandered aimlessly for hours, forgetting to have written down Joline's address.
forgetting to have written
having forgotten to write
forgetting to write
having forgotten to have written
forgetfully writing
OA - B
My Analysis -
a) has "comma +ing form" => forgetting modifies "wandering" -> something that tells me that "forgetting" follows "wandering". ...(i)
Secondly, However, the author then changes the tense to "to have written" = present perfect. =mismatch.....(ii)
c) = a's (i)
e) changes the meaning and is nonsensical. It implies that "writing" followed "wandered".
between b) and d) my brain exploded (read:aircraft) in the air
However, I will try my best to land safely. Please let me know whether I landed on water or on runway!
D) having forgotten = present perfect tense ; to have written - another present perfect tense - not correct because we dont need two perfects.
b) remains and wins.
...as per (i)..having forgotten = present perfect; okay.
to write down = infinitive = follows the same tense as present perfect.
Please let me know your expert thoughts
Thanks
Voodoo
Good analyses, both of you!
So, in summary, and to streamline a bit:
Arlene wandered for hours, during which time she was either (A/C) forgetting to do something, (B/D) having forgotten to do something, or (E) writing something. Well, we know she was not continually writing something the whole time she was wandering, so (E) is out. Now we ask whether she was continually forgetting to do something the whole time she was wandering (i.e. was the forgetting contemporaneous with the wandering)... and the answer is no; the forgetting took place BEFORE the wandering even started. So (A) and (C) are out. From there we're down to (B) and (D) and you're exactly right, Voodoo, that we don't need TWO perfect tenses, so (B) it is.
Remember that (as discussed in posts above) tense gets obscured when we use -ing participles, but to tell what tense is underlyingly being expressed, you can swing the idea expressed by the participial phrase around to the end of the sentence (inserting a "because" or some such word before it) and see what tense it winds up needing to be in.
For instance:
(e.g., story of what happened to you yesterday) Having lost my footing, I fell on the ice.
(e.g., story of what happens to you all the time) Having lost my footing, I fall on the ice.
(e.g., description of what you fear will happen to you tomorrow night) Having lost my footing, I will fall on the ice.
These are all acceptable sentences, and clearly they all begin identically with a perfect participle. To investigate the underlying tense that is tacitly expressed by the participial phrases, we can manipulate the sentence orders:
I fell on the ice because I HAD LOST my footing. (Must be HAD LOST (past perfect) to place the loss of footing prior in time to simple past "fell.")
I fall on the ice because I HAVE LOST my footing. (Must be HAVE LOST (present perfect) to place the loss of footing prior in time to simple present "fall.")
I will fall on the ice because I WILL HAVE LOST my footing. (Must be WILL HAVE LOST (future perfect) to place the loss of footing prior in time to simple future "will fall.")
One more method: in our sentence about Arlene and Joline, we can perform related "sentence surgery" to determine for sure whether we want a perfect participle or a simple participle. If we made this a "because" sentence, how would we phrase it? "Arlene wandered aimlessly for hours because she..."? Well, we would complete that like this: "...because she had forgotten to write down Joline's address." Anything else you try to complete it with won't work out, e.g. "Arlene wandered for hours because she forgot to--"--nope, the forgetting took place before the wandering, so we need to indicate that... or "Arlene wandered aimlessly for hours because she had forgotten to have written--"--nope, we just want a regular simple infinitive "to write." So, once you've settled on "because she had forgotten to write...," when it comes to transforming that into a participial phrase to comply with the answer choices, you know you want to keep a marker of the perfect aspect with "forgotten" and no such marker with "to write." So again, you land (safely
) at (B).
