Shouldn't it be "she'd" past tense?
Otherwise it's just someone saying "goodbye too many times before" and someone who'd previously said "goodbye" more than is acceptable.
...I'm almost certainly overthinking this but I'd wager that tense error is important when translating to Latin.
It's like reading XML where someone's left out a closing tag. :P
"She had said goodbye too many times before" means, at some point in the past, it was the case that she had previously said goodbye too many times. I think this is the intended meaning.
"She said goodbye too many times before" I don't think makes sense if you're extremely literal about it, since I can't see what "before" would track to without the embedded past.
The grammatically correct versions I can come up with are: - She had (or she'd) said goodbye too many times before. - She said goodbye too many times. - She said, "Goodbye too many times before".
Disclaimer: I do get that these are all worse song lyrics and that nobody had any problem understanding the intended meaning of the example sentence, which is sort of the goal of grammar.
It would grammatically work if you interpreted 'said' as a habitual action.
"Before [the etiquette training], she said 'goodbye' too many times. [Now, she says it just once.]"
In the context of the song, I think the habitual interpretation makes sense; the lyrics speak of trying to break the pattern of a dysfunctional relationship. This also works in that "said goodbye" has figurative intent (meaning 'left the relationship') over its literal meaning of verbally expressing one's departure.
In the song, "before" is an adverb referring to the current time in the story, which does not impact the goodbye-saying.
I can only make yours scan if I interpret it as "She said goodbye too many times before... I stopped taking her back.
Whispered goodbye as she got on a plane
Never to return again
...
This love has taken its toll on me
She said goodbye too many times before
And her heart is breaking in front of me
And I have no choice 'cause I won't say goodbye anymore
Isn't the grammatically correct rendering of that line "she _has_ said goodbye too many times before"? (Present Perfect, right?)
Now I'm curious to hear the recording: is there a sibilant, "she's"?
Edit: Several others made the same point below. I'll leave this here, but they were first. /e
Even vocalizing normally the difference is hard to tell. Try saying "She said I love you" vs "She's said I love you" – unless you make a point to completely stop in between words there's basically zero distinction.
Yes, probably (I don't know the context), but it seems to me that in colloquial US English the traditional complex tense system has been somewhat simplified: perhaps another example of the historical influence of Germans and other non-native speakers in the US. I'm British, of course, so I don't really know what I'm talking about here but I think I've heard native speakers of US English say things that are just wrong, because of the choice of verb tense, in any form of British English that I am familiar with: things like "Did you already do it?", though I can't guarantee that's a good example. Of course it could be that the verb system of colloquial US English is just as complex as the verb system of British English but the subtleties pass me by: I just notice the things that to me seem wrong, like failing to distinguish between "Did you do" and "Have you done".
Me and you, we've known each other
Yeah, ever since we were sixteen
I wished I would have known
I wished I could have called you
Just to say "Goodbye, Bobby Jean"Maybe that is something some Americans might say, but it is certainly not the most natural way I would say it.
I would likely say "I wish you'd done X instead" or "I wish you'd X'd"
Perfect tense is common. Future is occasionally avoided like above. Pluperfect and future perfect are almost never used, and most speakers would convey that meaning a different way. E.g. "I'll visit the store before then" rather than "I'll have visited the store". There is also some pseudo future tenses related to "going/gonna" (e.g. "I'm going to do that").
I think tenses are probably taught in some schools, but I didn't learn any of this until I took other languages. The average US English speaker probably doesn't know the names of all the tenses and doesn't even know what subjunctive, indicative, etc. mean.
"Did you already do it?" sounds perfectly normal to me on the other hand.
I'd be interested to know though. It just reads as ...wrong to me.
I guess it might be an English dialect thing.
Because it still has relevance for the present, it should be present perfect.
Unless if course it's about finally quitting, then the past tense makes sense.
Yeah, that sounds OK. Probably better than my original suggestion.
Or even the contracted "She's said goodbye too many times before".
Passive past would be something like "Goodbye had been said too many times before [by her]"
In active voice, the subject does something to the object.
In passive voice, the object is affected [by the subject]. (I wanted to write "is done something to" instead of "affected", but that feels ugly - the issue with affected is that it is also an adjective; I really mean the past participle here)
The object becomes the subject, and vice versa. The be auxiliary needs to be present. If be is not here, it ain't passive. If be is here… be can be used in active voice so you can't know for sure, but if there's a "by ..." clause, or if adding one feels natural, that a good hint.
The intent of the passive voice is usually to focus on the object or the action, of de-emphasis the subject, of even to drop it because it's not important, it's redundant or even to create some suspense regarding who performed the action.
(English is a second language to me, though what I wrote completely applies to my first language too)