Jim Martin Inventing A New Tense

Jim Martin wrote to sysfling on 22 March 2017 at 07:03 and 08:51:

Here's one though that Halliday's [tense] system doesn't cope with:

if I had have done it

Blogger Comment:

Ignoring the if makes it clear that this is simply an instance of someone misinterpreting

I'd have done it

as

I had have done it 

instead of

I would have done it

The tense system provides the means of interpreting such instances — this one would be: "past-in-present-in-past" — and thus, the means of understanding why they are anomalous, and thus, why they are unlikely to scale the cline of instantiation and find a place in the general system of potential.

Googling 'had have' will demonstrate the infrequency of such instances.

For the discourse semantics of verbal groups (Martin 1992), see here, here and here.