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Had an argument with my colleague regarding the example from "Advanced Grammar in Use" by Martin Hewings:

In two years time Morneau will have been acting for 50 years, and shows no signs of retiring from the theatre.

To me it sounds a bit fancy, but clear and grammatically correct. However, my colleague insists that it should be corrected in one of these ways:

  1. In two years time Morneau will have been acting for 50 years, and he shows no signs of retiring from the theatre.
  2. In two years time Morneau will have been acting for 50 years, and yet shows no signs of retiring from the theatre.
  3. Morneau will have been acting for 50 years in two years time, and shows no signs of retiring from the theatre.

So do you think if it's correct grammatically and stylistically? Can someone think of similar sentences, some real life examples?

Yuriy Batsura
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  • It is a bit fancy, but it's perfectly grammatical, an example of what's called Conjunction Reduction, which deletes unnecessarily repeated constituents of conjoined sentences. The comma, btw, indicates an intonation curve that effectively substitutes for the subject, by announcing a new clause continuing the same subject. – John Lawler Dec 12 '18 at 15:32

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The bare bones of your sentence are:

Morneau | will have been acting and shows

It is not a compound sentence, i.e., with two independent clauses, but a simple sentence with one subject and a compound verb joined by and. By the rules of traditional grammar, the comma should not be there. Or you may add the pronoun he to produce the second independent clause, as your friend suggests, but doing so merely to satisfy a comma rule doesn’t seem especially satisfactory either: there is no ambiguity as to who the subject of shows is. So why bother?

The other suggestions are merely stylistic, but still don’t deal with the comma problem. Adding a contrastive, either and yet or just yet as a conjunction, changes the meaning of the sentence. Sticking in two years time at the end of the clause merely makes the future perfect sound clumsy, so it’s hardly an improvement.

In longer sentences,however, especially as here where the verbs are different tenses, even the best writers toss in a comma. The best solution, then, would be either toss the comma or leave the sentence as is.

KarlG
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    I might be wrong, but can we consider verbs in different tenses as compound verb? I don't mean simple cases, but future perfect progressive & present simple do not seem to work as a part of a single clause. – Yuriy Batsura Dec 12 '18 at 15:47
  • Two or more verbs joined by a conjunction and having the same subject form a compound verb. The tense is irrelevant. – KarlG Dec 12 '18 at 18:50