The past dynamic

The Past Dynamic is fifth in frequency in fiction (2.4%) and is extremely rare in technical literature (see page 53). It is used when the speaker who is mentally in the past represents a verbal process as rela­tively dynamic. Objectively, a verbal process can be concrete or ab­stract, its length ranging from several instants to infinite; continuous or repeated; isolated or simultaneous or sequent with other processes.

Examples of Verbal Processes of Increasing Length

1. I smiled at Susan. Susan was going pink (J. Braine); 2. Felix felt his heart beating. She was coming through the orchard with the dog (J. Galsworthy); 3. Nobody else was downstairs, except my aunt. She was reading the letters (E. Delefield); 4. I was waiting for the telephone all last night (A. Saxton); 5. I was now occupying Murdock's room during the few winter weeks when Murdock slept at home. (A. Cronin); 6. He was palpitating with excitement all through the succeeding months (F. Norris); 7. The Right Wing Leaders of the Labour Party are doing exactly what they accused the Tories of doing in the years when Hitler was preparing war (D. Worker); 8. In the fourteenth century the Italians %vere expressing themselves in daggers and verse (J. Galsworthy); 9. They went up to the small munching woodman and asked him where the glades were leading (Th. White) (See also Examples 4 and 5 on page 42).

Concrete Processes. Concrete processes taking place at a certain moment of the past (~’~/~.~) are denoted by verbs in the Past Dynam­ic in about 58% of all its uses (see pp. 109—113).

Examples of Abstract Processes: 1. Even though she was out of school now, she was clerking as before and dressing as before (Th. Dreiser); 2. Her brother was doing the literature course as a preliminary to law (R. Graves); 3. Even then he did not change his habits; for he was drink­ing and playing cards half the day and night (O'Henry); 4. Walter, whom she now greatly admired, was going with a girl by the name of Edna Strong. He often took Edna and some of his friends to boathouse resorts on the Little Shark River (Th. Dreiser); 5. Joseph turned to stare now at a photogravure of a large square-rigged sailing-vessel. It was hanging on the wall in a stained pitch-pine frame under glass (E. James); 6. He knew that they were at their old gayeties. Pullmans were hauling them to and fro, papers were greeting them with inter­esting mentions, the elegant lobbies of hotels and the glow of polished diningrooms were keeping them close within the walled city (Th. Drei­ser); 7- A few ragged remnants of the old forest stood in the woods and'a few of the still older trunks were lying about as dead logs in the brushwood (E. Seton-Thompson); 8. He told me about his difficulties. It appeared that he was making a bare living at times, at others doing very well (Th. Dreiser); 9. Still an active woman, she was managing the household ably (A. Cronin); 10. "Now when I went to that medical school down at Penn," Doc Appleton said, "they thought, you know, a country boy, dumb. After that first year they weren't saying so dumb any more" (J. Updike); 11. Thackerey was seeing a lot of Graham these days (A. Kingsley); 12. He was exhausted. He was working too hard, sleepeng little, and eating nothing (W. S. Maugham); 13. When we met, John Galsworthy asked me technical questions about soldier-slang — he was writing a war play and wanted it to be accurate (R. Graves); 14. Within three days he was ill, though no one had seen the disease before. His temperature went up; he was vomiting, he had diarrhoea, blood spots were forming under his skin (C. P. Snow).