DOES IT MATTER THAT ENGLISH DOESN’T HAVE AN IMPERFECT TENSE?

October 7, 2010 at 10:06 PM · Literature

DOES IT MATTER THAT ENGLISH DOESN’T HAVE AN IMPERFECT TENSE? I have posted, for example here and here, about the controversy among linguists about whether a language’s grammar shapes the thinking of the people who speak that language. Raban describes how, in order to convey the imperfect in English, a translator will use the construction “would plus infinitive”, as in a Lydia Davis translation of a passage in which Flaubert describes the regular Thursday meetings that Emma Bovary has with her lover Leon: “She would follow him to the hotel; he would go up, he would open the door, he would go in…” Davis is scrupulous about conveying Flaubert’s choice of the imperfect. Raban counts 123 uses of “would” in a seven page section devoted to the romance with Leon. The result, Raban concludes, is “maddening affectation.” Not having the imperfect does seem to make a difference in the effects which English can convey. Raban has an apt quote on the importance of the imperfect from Proust, which Lydia Davis quotes in her introduction: “This [use of the] imperfect, so new in literature…completely changes the aspect of things and people.”