from Wednesday's House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform's Hearing on the GSA Administrator Investigation
REP. JOHN YARMUTH (D-KY): I have two questions. One is that you said, sometimes, you have a problem with tense. And basically there are only three tenses.
LURITA DOAN, GSA ADMINISTRATOR: No, that's not true.
YARMUTH: Past, present and future.
DOAN: No, there's, like, present perfective. There's present progressive, past progressive...
YARMUTH: In the time continuum -- that's grammar. But in the time continuum, there are only -- it either happened, it is happening or it will happen.
DOAN: Or it's ongoing as we talk.
YARMUTH: I'm trying to get a handle on exactly where the issue of tense might relate to whether or not you actually were speculating about what you might do, what you may have in fact done or what you were in the process of doing.
DOAN: Well, I thought I was using, like, a hortatory subjunctive right there, in which...
YARMUTH: OK.
Well, she was an English professor, who graduated from Vassar with honors in English... as the blogger linked above points out, maybe she does know her tenses after all.
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You'd think so, wouldn't you... But the statement in question bares no resemblence whatsoever to a hortatory subjunctive... It seems that they don't teach real grammar in the Rovian School of sidestepping the point.
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