Conversation started Aug 24, 2014 at 2:43.
tchrist
tchrist
Aug 24, 2014 02:43
@Arrowfar Oh!!
You can’t move that because you can’t delete it.
user116848
@tchrist So what should I do?
tchrist
tchrist
It can be migrated by an ELL moderator, preferably with the advice and consent of the ELU mod team.
user116848
So I flag it?
tchrist
tchrist
That would be the only way.
What is the reason you would like to move it?
It might actually be a dupe here.
But I see you are not getting good answers.
user116848
I don't find the answers helpful.
user116848
Aug 24, 2014 02:45
I think some expert at ELU will help me out
tchrist
tchrist
Nor should you.
That was is actually fairly easy.
user116848
So can I post it at ELU or will it be marked as duplicate?
tchrist
tchrist
> Vincent remembered Eddie’s wife, “I knew Naedine very well; she was very nice to me. I felt I had a great rapport with her". Vincent said, “Eddie didn’t talk much about it, but I thought she might have had a problem with alcohol.
@Arrowfar It will probably be duped out.
user116848
I see
tchrist
tchrist
But the reason for the have had is easy.
user116848
Aug 24, 2014 02:47
Yes, which is?
tchrist
tchrist
The first part is said and then didn’t talk, which are both in the past.
Then the next guy, the I-fellow, needs to say that she already had the problem at that time.
So it has to farther into the more distant past.
Plus just say "might have" sounds like a less-certain variant of "may have".
And those can be used for things happening right now.
Yes, may formally gets backshifted into might, but few today follow such niceties.
So you have to make the might have be clearly in the past.
A past perfect is further back then a plain old regular past, right?
So it was a pre-existing condition.
user116848
Yes
user116848
So the first sentence is farther in the past.
user116848
And other two sentences?
tchrist
tchrist
This would be a little different in Romance languages, which have inflectional systems and you can have both perfect and imperfect tenses, and for the synthetic perfect tenses, you could inflect the "have" part differently depending on quite how you meant it. But English only has modals, which don’t really map to that sort of thing cleanly.
looks
> “I thought she had a good chance to get on the medal stand,” Dunn said Monday. “And if she got a good jump, I thought she might have had a chance to win it.
> I thought she [was having] a good change to get on the medal stand. And if she [did get / were to get] a good jump, I thought that [would have had /might have had].
So why the second had at the far set.
Because this is a hypothetical about something that is already completed.
It isn’t mandatory that the second one be "would/might have had" instead of simply "would/night have", but by putting in in the perfect construction, you make it a past hypothetical much more clearly.
Because the whole thing is done and gone.
It is no longer a possibility.
The perfect aspect indicates that everything is all over with.
user116848
Aug 24, 2014 02:58
So this sentence is farther in the past too? What would be the meaning if I say it like this:- "I thought she might have a chance to win it" without had
tchrist
tchrist
I’m shooting from the hip here. These are not prepared answers.
Well, here’s the difference.
user116848
It's okay. More helpful than the answers I got.
user116848
Yes.....
tchrist
tchrist
"I thought she might have a chance to win it" probably means that the possibility had not completed yet, that the results are not yet decided.
user116848
I see.
tchrist
tchrist
Aug 24, 2014 03:00
""I thought she might have had a chance to win it" wipes out the openness of the possibility. Whatever happened, it’s all settled by now. And from the sound of it, she probably didn’t make it.
Maybe it would be useful to think about perfects as always being all done with.
They’re closed off.
I am not altogether positive that these are completely set in stone.
user116848
nods
tchrist
tchrist
Your last one is something else again yet.
> The big woman's face was bright red. For a minute I thought she might have a stroke. It was 100 degrees in the shade.
That means this:
> The big woman's face was bright red. For a minute I thought she might be going to have a stroke. It was 100 degrees in the shade.
Compare with this version:
> The big woman's face was bright red. For a minute I thought she might have had a stroke. It was 100 degrees in the shade.
That one means this:
> The big woman's face was bright red. For a minute I thought she perhaps really did have a stroke. It was 100 degrees in the shade.
So the perfect ties up loose ends.
The action is not complete in "might have" a stroke. With "might have had", it is.
user116848
Very nice explanation! tchrist
 
Conversation ended Aug 24, 2014 at 3:06.