swan song

[maria balina]

Hi, Mr. Carillo!

1.  I read the following in the column of Carmen N. Pedrosa.
            
            "President Aquino's unconscionable use of power is encouraged by the swan song that
             this is the way forward for the country."
      
      It can be inferred that swan song means that one big thing or achievement that Aquino will
      be remembered for even if he's no longer president.  It's like a testament to how well he has
      run the country.  However, the word swan song is not in the dictionary.  I wonder why.

2.  Does the phrase "not that I know of" mean no?  Can it also mean "I guess?"

3.  Am I right when I say that the past perfect tense can never be used alone in a sentence since it expresses an action completed before another action indicated by a simple past verb?  The past perfect tense should also be used sparingly.

Please enlighten me.  Thank you.

[Joe Carillo]

I’m surprised that “swan song” isn’t listed in your dictionary. Mine, the Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary, defines it literally as “a song of great sweetness said to be sung by a dying swan” and figuratively as “a farewell appearance or final act or pronouncement.” At any rate, I don’t think that “swan song” was used by Ms. Pedrosa in its semantically correct sense in that sentence. She might have meant “mistaken idea” or “rationalization,” as in this rewrite of that sentence: “President Aquino’s unconscionable use of power is encouraged by the mistaken idea that this is the way forward for the country.”

Also, I think it’s incorrect to infer that by using “swan song,” Ms. Pedrosa wanted to convey the idea that the unconscionable use of power is “that one big thing or achievement that Aquino will be remembered for even if he’s no longer president.” My feeling is that she really meant to say that it’s neither the correct way to make the country go forward nor a desirable thing for a national leader to want to be remembered about. By the mistaken use of “swan song,” however, this sense was lost in the rendition.

As to the phrase “not that I know of,” it definitely doesn’t mean a categorical “no” and it doesn’t mean “I guess” either. What it means is “not that I’m aware of,” as in this conversational exchange: “Did the senator really plagiarize those passages from the blogger’s website?” “Not that I know of, for I haven’t read the senator’s speech and the blog yet.” Of course, the sense would be downright wrong if the reply was “No, for I haven’t read the senator’s speech and the blog yet.”

As to your last question, it’s not right to say that the past perfect tense can never be used alone in a sentence and it’s not right either to say that the past perfect tense should be used sparingly.

It’s true that the typical past perfect sentence consists of two separate actions in time, as in this sentence: “The ship had sunk when the rescue team arrived.” The earlier action takes the past perfect (“had sunk”) and the later action takes the simple past (“arrived”). However, the past perfect can also be used alone to denote an action that began and ended at some indefinite time in the past, as in this sentence: “The heavy floods had lasted two weeks.”

Clearly, there’s no point in prescribing that the past perfect be used sparingly. It will always be called for when the action had taken place and was completed at an indefinite time in the past. When the precise time is given, however, the simple past tense must be used: “We met at the park yesterday.”

[Mwita Chacha]

Sir, I fairly don't think ''The ship had sunk when the rescue team arrived,'' the sentence you've supplied as an example to clarify on past perfect tenses, is  pertinent one in that it is wrongly using the word ''when.'' My understanding of the subordinating conjuction ''when'' is that it's an adverb of time joining two clauses that have their actions taking place at one time. Since you wanted to mean the action of the arriving of the rescue team and that of the ship sinking occured at two separate times, the appropriate and correct subordinating conjuction should have been ''before,'' which, like ''when'', is the adverb of time, but unlike it, serves to show that two actions in sentence clauses indeed have taken place not in the same time. Thus my reformed, legitimate past-perfect sentence would be ''The ship had sunk before the rescue team arrived.'' But if there had been an imperative need to incorporate ''when,'' then I would have introduced another time adverb to the sentence. The other reformed sentence would therefore read ''The ship had already sunk when the rescue team arrived''

[Joe Carillo]

In the sentence “'The ship had sunk when the rescue team arrived,” I’m using the subordinating conjunction “when” in the relative sense of “at or just after the moment that”—meaning that the rescue team didn’t arrive early enough to find the ship still afloat but nevertheless arrived close to the time of its sinking.

In your version, “The ship had sunk before the rescue team arrived,” you are using the conjunction “before” in the sense of “earlier than the time that.” Your “before” version gives no indication in any way that the rescue team arrived at a time close to the sinking of the ship—it could have been hours, days, or weeks before the sinking of the ship.

We must keep in mind that “when” could have any of the following relative senses: (1) “at what time,” (2) “at, during, or after the time that,” and (3) “at or just after the moment that.” In contrast, the conjunction “before” has the sense of “earlier than the time that,” with no indication whatsoever of the closeness of a later event to the occurrence or consummation of an earlier event. When “before” is used in such contexts, the earlier event happened sometime before the later event but there’s no way of ascertaining relatively when. For all we know, the earlier event—in this case the sinking of the ship—could have happened a long, long time before.

[maria balina]

Mr. Carillo, I used the "Oxford American Dictionary."  I also referred to my kindle.

Thank you for your explanation!