Nonfactual before-clause 사실얘기가 아닌 경우의 before 절
I saw him before he had seen me.
full context:
https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/155934/i-saw-him-before-he-had-seen-me-paradoxical-past-perfect-with-before
1. I saw him before he saw me.
2. I had seen him before he saw him.
3. I saw him before he had seen me.
4. I had seen him before he had seen me
before 는 영어 의미상 한글과는 다르기에
우리가 오해하는 경향이 많은데 영어인 역시도 오해하기 쉬운 품사/접속사 이다
before; 그 때에 앞선 때 또는 그때 보다 먼저 또는 그것 보다 차라리
1. In advance of the time when: See me before you leave. 떠날 때 보다 앞서서 나를 보라
2. Rather than; sooner than: I will die before I will betray my country. 조국을 배반하기 전에 차라리 죽겠다
The before-clause in 3, and perhaps also in 4, maybe nonfactual;
that is to say, the event in the before-clause may not have taken place
(He did not get a chance to see me, because I evaded him.).
Nonfactual before-clause may imply preference, as in [1], or implausibility, as in [2]
1. He'll beg for food before he'll ask his parents for money.
( He won't ask his parents for money; He would rather beg for money than ask his parents for money.)
Pigs will fly before he'll become a mathematician.
(He'll never become a mathematician.)
Or the situation in the matrix clause may prevent that in the before-clause from taking place.
He died before writing a will.
(he died sooner than writing a will.)
Sally stopped Ted before he had a chance to reply.
(she stopped Ted sooner than he had a chance to reply.)
* In linguistics (and in generative grammar in particular), a matrix clause is a clause that contains a subordinate clause. Plural: matrices. Also called a matrix or a higher clause. In terms of function, a matrix clause determines the central situation of a sentence.
The
last example "Sally stopped Ted before he had a change to reply'
doesn't use the perfect, so why is it used in 'I saw him before he had
seen me"? [13] just looks weird to me - as if perfect places him seeing
me before me seeing him and the 'before' clause places me seeing him
squarely before him seeing me, which is confusing. Are they both in
so-called 'past in the past', like "I told him that I had seen him
before he had seen me"? I understand that time is subjective and
'simple' tenses don't have much to do with time at all, but it makes
this construction even more confusing to me.
Even Cambridge's Grammar says that that the event expressed in before complement takes place subsequently and has this example:
She
left the country before she had written her thesis allows (and indeed
suggests) that she had started writing when she left and is thus not
equivalent to She left the country before she wrote her thesis, which
indicates that the leaving preceded the whole of the thesis writing.
I don't understand why 'had written' suggests that she had started writing when she left.
Lewis Michael's The English Verb says:
The
past retrospective is similar in every way to the present retrospective
except that instead of the events being before Now, they are before a
particular point in Past Time." - Present retrospective is used to
'look back' on things and is deeply rooted to the point Now. Looking at,
back, or forward is possible with remote forms, expressing the fact
that the speaker views things from a point remote in time.
Does
this mean that the speaker uses the 'I saw him' as a point to look back
on thing? How does that works when when it's in a before-clause?
I get the meaning of the sentence, but I don't get why it's constructed like that. What am I missing?
Another example:
Snape had struck before Harry was ready, before he had even begun to summon any force of resistance.
Note:
I've read previously-asked questions about similar topics and the
answers given didn't provide much clarity on the subject. Maybe I'm just
bad at reading.
The difference is that Past Perfect
serves a different purpose in the first part of the sentence (I saw him /
I had seen him) than in the second (before he saw / had seen me). In
the first part, it's used to establish a timeline - the "past in the
past" use that most English learners are primarily familiar with - while
in the second, it's used to establish the situation as unreal (in a
manner similar to the third conditional - cf. "If I had seen him, I
would've said hi").
So going through your sentences:
[1]
"I saw him before he saw me" and [2] "I had seen him before he saw me" -
You did see him, and he did see you. No unreal/hypothetical situation
here. Past Perfect is optional, since you don't need it to clarify the
timeline - you're already using "before". You can still use it to
emphasize that it's important you saw him first, though.
[3] "I
saw him before he had seen me" - You did see him, and you stipulate that
he would've seen you, but he didn't (eg. because you managed to sneak
out first). It's analogous to [1], but since you want to signify that he
didn't see you, you dial the Simple Past back to Past Perfect.
[4]
"I had seen him before he had seen me" - analogous to [3], but I'd say
that in this case you're placing the entire situation in the context of a
"past before the past". Eg.
I saw John a week ago, and he asked
me if I was at the birthday party. I was, but I had seen him before he
had seen me, so I snuck off.
As for the other examples:
Sally stopped Ted before he had a chance to reply.
You
don't need Past Perfect here ("had had"), since there's no ambiguity -
"stopped" already implies taking away the chance to reply. In a
different sentence (eg. "Sally smirked before he had / had had a chance
to reply") you might have to use Past Perfect to indicate that one
action prevented the other from happening.
She left the country before she wrote / had written her thesis
I
wouldn't go as far as to say Past Perfect here implies she began
writing. It's really more about Simple Past here meaning that the entire
process of writing the thesis to completion happened after she left the
country, while Past Perfect means that - at the very least - she hasn't
completed writing, and she would have if it wasn't for her leaving the
country. It might mean she started writing, or that she was strongly
planning to start.
Snape had struck before Harry was ready, before he had even begun to summon any force of resistance.
A
literal reading implies that Harry was ready after being struck, but
has never begun to summon any force of resistance - but in this case I'd
say it's more about gradually putting more emphasis on how much of an
interruption Snape striking Harry was.