Question:
Please take a look on the following excerpt from an official essay. I
suspect that there are two grammatical errors in it but I cannot say
for sure.
The reason is that it is from the essay I found on UK's website. It
seems to be hard for the educated native English speaker to make such
basic gramatical errors like this. Would any one out there spend a few
minutes checking it out and then tell me whether or not I am right
please?
"Roots in the past are often used to claim a place in the present -
from royal genealogies to Saddam Hussein's autographed bricks in the
reconstructed palace of Nebuchadnezzar. So when, 50 years ago, Watson
and Crick discovered the double helix it was not long before it was
seized upon as a new tool to uncover our history - for DNA is not just
the genetic code of our present, but a key to unlocking the past. "
1. In the first sentence why did the writer use the present tense? In
my opinion, because of "in the past", the simple past tense is the
only correct choice for the writer to use in this case.
2. In my grammar class I am taught that to say of the function of a
certain thing, we should use the pattern "thing+for+verbing" while to
say of the purpose of a thing, we use the pattern "thing + to+ do".
In the last sentence, I notice that the writer used "a key to
unlocking the past". I think the correct use in this case is "a key to
unlock the past".
What do you think?
Answer:
Too simplistic an analysis. In English we can talk about the past in
the present tense as well. In this case, though, the writer is talking
about something that exists in the present--"roots in the past"--in
other words, a personal history, like a geneology (family tree), or a
cultural history, like the one the PRC government alleges all oversseas
Chinese share with contemporary mainland Chinese.
I think either "to" or "for" is perfectly acceptable here. "unlocking"
is a gerund and not a verb, and "unlocking the past" is a gerund phrase
that is also a noun phrase. "a key to unlock the past" is also
possible, of course, but the choice is a stylistic one, and there is
absolutely nothing wrong with the style of the two sentences you
posted. It is perfectly acceptable and grammatical and even excellent
English.
Native speakers of English will either "This is the key to the
{lock/door}" or "This is the key "for the {lock/door}". It's a matter
of dialect and, perhaps, whim
think it is far, far better to go in the opposite direction when
attempting to understand what is and is not acceptable English. Native
speakers are not bound by the Procrustean grammatical rules your
English teachers hand down to you as some sort of immutable and
inviolable laws about English usage. The "laws" of English usage are
based on how people actually use the language; people do not actually
use the language based on these mythical laws. Grammar is supposed to
provide a description and an explanation of why the language is spoken
and written the way it is and not as a code of how the language must be
spoken and written. Those codes we call "style manuals"; they are
almost 100% prescriptive and are predicated on the belief that
uniformity of expression is desirable because it leads to easier
comprehension. Perhaps this is true in most cases, and it certainly is
true when people are writing and speaking formal English on formal
occasions, but there is nothing sacred about style manuals.
Rather than making some wrongheaded judgments about the lack of
grammaticality of what are apparently supposed to be examples of
outstanding essays in English, it would be much better to use these
essays to inductively arrive at what is acceptable in English. This is
how we native speakers do it, just as you native speakers of Chinese do
the same thing with your native language.
You must always ask the fundamental question when confronted with any
example of a language for analysis: "Is the meaning of this language
clear?" The question you are asking is quite a different one and not
very useful: "Is this constructed according to the grammatical rules of
English?"
I believe I've said before that good grammar does not always make good
English. Language usage is not a function of grammar; it is, in fact,
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