[Casiopea]

jwschang

To add to my previous response:

1. New speakers often say wrongly:
I heard John talkS to her.
2. I heard John talk (infintive) to her.
3. I heard John talking (cont participle) to her.

New speakers often say incorrectly

1. I heard John talks to her. (Yup, not OK)
2. I heard John talk to her. (This is OK)
3. I heard John talking to her. (This is OK)

Whilst the infinitive in (2) and the cont participle in (3) do not have a tense by themselves, they actually "borrow" the tense from the antecedent verb "heard". Since "heard" is in the past tense, it is understood that "talk" is in the simple past tense in (2); and "talking" is in the past cont tense in (3).

Hmm. I agree with the analysis for (3) and don't agree with the analysis for (2). The reason being,

2a. I heard John talk to her through the window.
2b. I heard John talked to her through the window. (idiom, grammatical)
2c. I heard John talked to her through the window. (finite verb, ungrammatical)

Sentences 2a and 2b hold different meanings for me.

In 2a, event 1, 'heard' took place in the past, as did event 2, 'talk to'; but, and here's the odd part, using the infinitive 'talk to' expresses an action in the here and now. That is, 'heard' is expressed in the past, it happened, but 'talk to' is being expressed in the non-past, so the listener/reader views 'talk to' as if it were taking place in the non-past. That is, it's like a flashback in the movies. They play a scene that happened in the past, but the audience is watching it in the now, the present time. That's how I feel about sentence 2a. The verb 'talk to' is not past tense at the semantic level. I don't feel as if tense has been borrowed.

As for sentence 2b, well, 'talked to' is an idiom, so it's probable that native speakers often delete the -ed so as to avoid the idiomatic expression.

As for 2c, it's ungrammatical. -ed needs to be deleted.

2c. I heard John talked to her through the window.
(finite verb, ungrammatical)

2. I heard John talk to her through the window.

Isn't there a problem with the fact that (2) has two meanings, and morever why is it that overt -ed results in ungrammaticality in (2c), whereas covert -ed results in grammaticality in (2b)?

2b. I heard John talk to her through the window.
(non-finte verb, grammatical)
2c. I heard John talked to her through the window.
(finite verb, ungrammatical)

And what about (2d), wherein the verb is non-finite in structure and finite in meaning?

2d. I heard John talk to her through the window. ('talk to' borrows tense from 'heard', resulting in 'talked to' at the semantic level)

I feel there are scary problems attached to 'borrow'ing tense. I read something about it some time ago, but that was a long time ago. I'll need more time to digest it. Sound rather tastly, though. Thanks for the menu. :D

:) By the way:
'Whilst', hmm, While is more common.
'cont participle', hmm, present participle is the common term.