The use of the past tense in games of pretend

Abstract

This note is concerned with the way in which children use tense to distinguish between different realities in games of pretend. I shall attempt to relate this phenomenon to a general feature of English grammar and suggest a social interpretation of this feature as well. My data are based on observation of my daughter and her friends engaged in pretend-games over the past five years. At the time of writing she is ten, and I noted the linguistic feature under discussion shortly after she had gone to school. I have also noted the phenomenon in children of about four (i.e. of pre-school age) who regularly play with older children. The feature is quite simple: the simple past tense form is used for giving ‘stage directions’ for a game of pretend (usually in association with dressing up) rather than the general ('present') tense. The following gives an example of this usage in the context of a game.

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