# present perfect - reason for name of tense



## Chasint

Hello

There are literally hundreds of threads on the forum dealing with questions about the usage of the Present Perfect tense in English. However I haven't been able to find one that addresses my question.

My grammar question

Since the so-called Present Perfect refers only to past events, why is it referred to as Present? It just isn't a present tense.   What's going on?

Can anyone rationalise this for me?

Thanks.


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## Beryl from Northallerton

Perfect tenses are perforce retrospective by dint of the action having been competed. 
The present part of the nomenclature refers, I assume, to the tense of the auxiliary. You could say much the same for the past perfect, but it breaks down when you're talking about the future perfect.


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## bennymix

As I see it, for a 'present perfect' verb form, the action is perfected (completed) in the present.   Simple?       That's not its only use, of course, but if a kid is almost finished her homework, and will be allowed to facebook her friends when it's done, then at the moment she finishes, she calls out, "I've finished my homework!"

This is also clear--a little less so--for present perfect progressive forms--denoting an act continuing from the past, over time, being carried on (or completed) in the present. The girl has studied piano for exactly 3 years, and is _presently_ doing so.   She's asked, "Do you study piano?"  "Yes." 
"How long have you studied?"  "I *have been studying* for 3 years, exactly, as of (now) today."


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## Chasint

Beryl from Northallerton said:


> Perfect tenses are perforce retrospective by dint of the action having been competed.
> The present part of the nomenclature refers, I assume, to the tense of the auxiliary. You could say much the same for the past perfect, but it breaks down when you're talking about the future perfect.


If you are saying that "present" refers to the auxiliary verb and "perfect" refers to the past participle then that makes sense. In fact it works for the future perfect as well.


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## Chasint

bennymix said:


> As I see it, for a 'present perfect' verb form, the action is perfected (completed) in the present.   Simple?       That's not its only use, of course, but if a kid is almost finished her homework, and will be allowed to facebook her friends when it's done, then at the moment she finishes, she calls out, "I've finished my homework!"


I'm much less convinced by this than I am by what Beryl said.

We don't habitually report a completed action at the instant we complete it. Also any past tense refers to completed actions in the sense that they are over and done with.

"I did my homework yesterday" also says that my homework is complete (perfected in your sense).


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## bennymix

Beryl said,
//Perfect tenses are perforce retrospective by dint of the action having been competed.//

True, and when it's completed in the present, it's present perfect!   The present is often conceived as a small span of time, including the present moment.   Hence I regard Biffo's remark as a quibble:

Biffo ///We don't habitually report a completed action at the instant we complete it.///  OK, so it's a few moments after. Maybe 5 seconds in my example.  We're going to quibble over this?

Please note that this non issue infects any attempt to speak in the present.  In my example, before the kid's announcement, "I've finished,"  the mom inquires from the other room. "Are you studying?" "Yes, I'm studying."

If Biffo were her dad, overhearing, he'd chime in, "You can't be studying, present time, you're talking to your mom."

The kid's reply, "Actually, I'm talking to you.  I _was_ talking to mom.  But, yes, I suppose you're correct, I should have said to her,  'Mom!  I _was_ studying, till I your question interrupted my thoughts.' "


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## boozer

The present perfect is present in form (the auxiliary verb 'have' is present). In meaning it is present not in terms of when the action was completed but because there always has to be some present relevance to the already completed action. In this way the present relevance of "I have read this book" is that you now know the story. Some present relevance is, I think, invariably present in a present-perfect-tense sentence. 

PS. I notice that Biffo was thinking about this at 2 a.m.  I would never do this for any Bulgarian verb tense because when it comes to the grammar of my own language, I am completely and blissfully clueless


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## Chasint

bennymix said:


> ...when it's completed in the present, it's present perfect!   The present is often conceived as a _*small span of time*_, including the present moment.   Hence I regard Biffo's remark as a quibble:
> 
> ...  OK, so it's a few moments after. Maybe 5 seconds in my example.  We're going to quibble over this?
> 
> Please note that this non issue infects any attempt to speak in the present.  In my example, before the kid's announcement, "I've finished,"  the mom inquires from the other room. "Are you studying?" "Yes, I'm studying."
> ...


I'm genuinely confused by this. It's not a quibble. Here's a scenario that doesn't fit within your 'small span of time'.

John and Jane are in a second-hand bookshop.

John: Let's compare which of these books we've read.
Jane: Okay. Have you read this one?
John: Yes I first read that ten years ago and then again two years ago. 
Jane: Okay, so that means you have read it at least twice so far.
Jane: Have you ever read this one?
John: No I've never read that one but I have read Wind in the Willows, right next to it.

I cannot see anything unusual about the use of tenses in the above dialogue even if the dialogue itself is contrived. Clearly John has not finished reading all these books in the last 5 seconds.


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## Chasint

boozer said:


> The present perfect is present in form (the auxiliary verb 'have' is present). In meaning it is present not in terms of when the action was completed but because there always has to be some present relevance to the already completed action. In this way the present relevance of "I have read this book" is that you now know the story. Some present relevance is, I think, invariably present in a present-perfect-tense sentence...


What about the present relevance of "I read this short story today."? Are you saying I don't know the story because I used Simple Past?


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## natkretep

I don't think the short span of time is what matters. I'm with boozer: it's the *present *perfect - because it is relevant to the *present*.

If you say, 'The postman's been', the main point is that there are letters now.


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## Chasint

natkretep said:


> I don't think the short span of time is what matters. I'm with boozer: it's the *present *perfect - because it is relevant to the *present*.
> 
> If you say, 'The postman's been', the main point is that there are letters now.


...and if I say "The postman came 5 seconds ago" there aren't letters? 

Of the answers given so far, there is only one that I find convincing and that is that the auxiliary verb's tense combined with the past participle motivates the name, e.g.

I have eaten. --->  I have (Present) eaten (Perfect).

I had eaten. ---> I had (Past) eaten (Perfect).

I shall have eaten. ---> I shall have (Future) eaten (Perfect).

Unless someone comes up with a more convincing explanation, I shall remain satisfied with that one.


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## natkretep

Biffo said:


> ...and if I say "The postman came 5 seconds ago" there aren't letters?


That gives the sentence a different focus. We're thinking about the coming itself, rather than than the effect of the coming. That's why it's in the past tense.


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## boozer

Yes, Nat has explained it well - "I read this book" would focus on the act of reading the book and the exact time when the reading took place - this is a simple past tense. "I have read the book" focuses on the fact that at present you do not need to read it because you know the story already. 

It may be pointed out that in many contexts the present perfect and past simple are used interchangeably and their situational meaning (I mean the meaning in the particular situation) is virtually the same.


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## Chasint

My explanation (based on Beryl's point) covers every single tense, e.g.

Future Perfect
I shall have eaten. ---> I shall have (Future) eaten (Perfect).   (There is no present tense here)

Past perfect continuous


You *had been waiting* there...

You had (Past) been (Perfect) waiting (Continuous)...

Without enumerating every single tense, I'm convinced it will work for all of them and that this is the only rational explanation.

I am now convinced that the name derives from a simple list of the tenses of the verbs that form part of a complex tense and has nothing to do with present relevance or indeed focus on anything.


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## boozer

It is the verb form that follows the meaning and not the meaning that follows the verb form. Besides, the present form of 'have' does add to the meaning. Otherwise it would not be there. 

The present perfect does not necessarily refer to a past action. It may easily refer to an action taking place before another action in the general present, unattached to the moment of speaking, e.g.
_In Ruritania people who have committed the crime of adultery are hanged._ 
This will cover crimes committed around the moment of speaking - both in the near past and future in what is seen as the general present.


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## Chasint

boozer said:


> It is the verb form that follows the meaning and not the meaning that follows the verb form....


My original question did not focus on the meaning, it focused on the reasoning behind the naming convention. Do you not agree that my explanation works perfectly and requires no complex reasoning about who affected what and when? (It's a serious question. I get the feeling you have not even considered what I am saying.)



boozer said:


> ... the present form of 'have' does add to the meaning. Otherwise it would not be there.
> ...


I'm not aware that I claimed otherwise. Please can you point out where I mentioned this?



boozer said:


> ...
> The present perfect does not necessarily refer to a past action. It may easily refer to an action taking place before another action in the general present, unattached to the moment of speaking, e.g.
> _In Ruritania people who have committed the crime of adultery are hanged._
> This will cover crimes committed around the moment of speaking - both in the near past and future in what is seen as the general present.


This statement has zero effect on my argument which states that the tense is named after the sequence of tenses within it. That rule works just as well in your example as anywhere else.


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## boozer

The naming convention, well - there are three (some linguists claim two) senses of time - present, past and future (present and future are sometimes considered as belonging together). Then there are two aspects to the verb action - perfective and progressive/continuous. A combination of those names of tenses and aspects forms the names of all verb tenses. The auxiliary verb 'have' in all its forms and the -ing form of the main verb are just the two outer expressions of those aspects.

Your original question (post 1) was why call the tense present if it is past. I say it is not past - it falls into the general category of present tenses and agrees in form and meaning with the concept of present time. It is present time because it invariably has present relevance, never mind that the action took place in the past. 

And, Biffo, I was not fishing for an argument and you are, of course, free to interpret the English tenses and naming conventions in any way you please.


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## Chasint

boozer said:


> ...Your original question (post 1) was why call the tense present if it is past. I say it is not past - it falls into the general category of present tenses and agrees in form and meaning with the concept of present time. It is present time because it invariably has present relevance, never mind that the action took place in the past. ...


Well you are simply repeating an argument that has already failed to convince me. In response I can only repeat my objections. I'll concentrate on just one. All past tenses have relevance in the present as do all tenses of any kind whatever. This is simply because we as human beings exist and speak only in the present. Are you really saying that "I read the book yesterday." (Simple Past) has no relevance in the present?


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## boozer

Well, it takes more grammar reading to get convinced, I appreciate that. It also takes some getting used to certain linguistic conventions and it is not for me to convert you, nor will I be trying. At the risk of being accused of again repeating my arguments, I am just going to quote from the grammar book that I used as a student, R. Quirk, Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, where the subject is addressed at some length, in fact, the kind of length impossible for this forum (I apologise if this exceeds the allowed quotation limits):

p. 191 Perfective Aspect
The overlap of meaning between tense and aspect is most problematic in English in the choice that has to be made between simple past and presentperfective:simple past: John lived in Paris for ten years.​present perfective: John has lived in Paris for ten years.

Here both sentences indicate a state of affairs before the present moment, but the simple past indicates that the period of residence has come to a close,whereas the present perfective indicates that the residence has continued up to the present time (and may even continue into the future). This kind ofdifference, although by no means invariable, is often summarized in the statement that the present perfective signifies past time 'with current relevance'.​In​​​​order to appreciate why 'current relevance' is a common implication of the present perfective, it is as well to begin with the most general definition​of the perfective aspect........


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## Chasint

boozer said:


> Well, it takes more grammar reading to get convinced, I appreciate that. It also takes some getting used to certain linguistic conventions and it is not for me to convert you, nor will I be trying. At the risk of being accused of again repeating my arguments...


I'm not interested simply in arguing. I'm seeking knowledge. You still haven't answered my question. Do you claim that the simple past has no relevance in the present? This 'relevance to the present' seemed to be the main thrust of your explanation. We can't have a rational discussion  if you simply ignore my questions. 

I'll take some time to digest what Quirk said and I'll come back on that later.


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## Einstein

I think Nat and Boozer have given the best explanations. I'll add some examples:

*Somebody has broken the window*; this tells us that the window is broken now, in the present.
*Somebody broke the window yesterday*; here we are talking about the details of the event itself, which took place in the past, not about its relevance to the present. It may or may not have been mended.

I*'ve never eaten lobster*; this experience is missing from my life. When I finally eat it, it will be a new experience.
*I didn't eat lobster last month*; this tells us about a situation limited to a time in the past.

*John Grisham has written X books*; that's the present total and will change as he contrinues to write.
*Ernest Hemingway wrote Y books*. That's how many books he wrote during his whole life, which *has finished *(it's not continuing). When *did it finish*, when *did this event occur*? It *finished *in 1961.


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## Chasint

Einstein said:


> I think Nat and Boozer have given the best explanations. I'll add some examples:
> 
> *Somebody has broken the window*; this tells us that the window is broken now, in the present.
> *Somebody broke the window yesterday*; here we are talking about the details of the event itself, which took place in the past, not about its relevance to the present. It may or may not have been mended.
> ...


I'll give a counterexample just to the first to avoid the discussion becoming too sprawling. If you want me to I'm happy to talk about examples two and three once we have agreed on the following. 

*Counterexample*_
There is a vandal in the neighbourhood. *Someone has broken* the same window in my house every weekend for the past year._ 
_Is it broken right now?
No I've repaired it as usual._

The tenses are used correctly in the above and there is no implication of the current state of the window in the phrase "Someone has broken..."


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## lucas-sp

First off: boozer's post is really, really, really important:





boozer said:


> The naming convention, well - there are three (some linguists claim two) senses of time - present, past and future (present and future are sometimes considered as belonging together). Then there are two aspects to the verb action - perfective and progressive/continuous. A combination of those names of tenses and aspects forms the names of all verb tenses. The auxiliary verb 'have' in all its forms and the -ing form of the main verb are just the two outer expressions of those aspects.


The _present_ is a tense, and the _perfect_ is an aspect. They are both inflections of the verb (along active/passive _voice_, indicative/subjunctive/imperative _mood_, etc.). We have three (or two) tenses in English and _en gros_ two different inflections of aspect. So verbs in the present can belong to four main categories: a present simple/non-continuous, a present perfect, a present continuous, and a present perfect continuous.

Let's distinguish the notion of "present" from the notion of "perfect."


Biffo said:


> Well you are simply repeating an argument that has already failed to convince me. In response I can only repeat my objections. I'll concentrate on just one. All past tenses have relevance in the present as do all tenses of any kind whatever. This is simply because we as human beings exist and speak only in the present. Are you really saying that "I read the book yesterday." (Simple Past) has no relevance in the present?


I completely agree with you here, and that explanation "there's a present relevance" has always seemed rickety to me for the same reason - if we are talking about something _now_, then there must implicitly be some relevance of that thing _now_.

Another, similar, explanation is that the "present perfect" expresses "a current state resulting from a past action." Verbs in the perfective aspect represent *the past actions that caused other implied or explicit actions and states*. So: "I had been running, so I was sweaty"; "I've read all these books already" (so I don't want to read any of them again now); and "He's broken that same window every week for the past year" (which is why I now think of him as a confirmed vandal and why I'm trying to get him arrested).

A verb in the present perfect, then, expresses a completed action that has produced or generated an action or state _in the present_. A verb in the past perfect expresses a completed action that has produced or generated an action or state _in the past_​. etc.


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## Einstein

Biffo said:


> I'll give a counterexample just to the first to avoid the discussion becoming too sprawling. If you want me to I'm happy to talk about examples two and three once we have agreed on the following.
> 
> *Counterexample*_
> There is a vandal in the neighbourhood. *Someone has broken* the same window in my house every weekend for the past year._
> _Is it broken right now?
> No I've repaired it as usual._
> 
> The tenses are used correctly in the above and there is no implication of the current state of the window in the phrase "Someone has broken..."


What it does imply is that the habit of window-breaking is continuing. *This *is the reference to the present state of things. My reference was to a single event, yours to a series of events. Obviously there will be a difference in the meaning conveyed by the present perfect.

EDIT:


lucas-sp said:


> I completely agree with you here, and that explanation "there's a present relevance" has always seemed rickety to me for the same reason - if we are talking about something _now_, then there must implicitly be some relevance of that thing _now_.


The action's relevance to the present is the same however we talk about it or even if we don't talk about it at all. The definition "present perfect" doesn't tell us that this relevance exists - we know that - but tells us how we are referring to it, i.e. what importance we are giving to that relevance.


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## bennymix

I think I'm with booker, here.   My original proposal was too simple:*  present perf. ==> completed in the present (or nearby). *   To this, it appears, should be added * OR completed in the past, but (for the speaker), of some present relevance.*  (And the past perf means completed in the past, but of relevance to another past act that is of concern.)**

Biffo's first counterexample, of books in the bookstore, fits this.
His second 'counterexample' is crystal clear in support of this.

*//Counterexample*_
There is a vandal in the neighbourhood. *Someone has broken* the same window in my house every weekend for the past year._ 
_Is it broken right now?
No I've repaired it as usual._//

AS the first sentence states, his situation (present tense) is that he has a vandal in the neighbood.   That person 'has broken' a particular window.  So the breaking--which I agree is completed--is part of a pattern of present.
 relevance.  I agree with Biffo that, here, at least, one assumes the act was done, completed;  there is no present broken window.   There IS a present to which the broken window (now fixed), is relevance, as directly stated in his first sentence.

I see Einstein has made a similar point.
===

**ADDED.   One must add, as per the above (bolded), that past and present perfect are now often used interchangeably, so the above should be taken to apply  _where there is any appreciable difference._


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## Chasint

lucas-sp said:


> ...
> A verb in the present perfect, then, expresses a completed action that has produced or generated an action or state _in the present_. A verb in the past perfect expresses a completed action that has produced or generated an action or state _in the past_​. etc.


I have to admit I'm a little disappointed with the standard of debate on this thread. Mostly I have been battered with a simple repetition of received knowledge. It is the received knowledge that I'm challenging. Further, no-one has commented on my foolproof (I believe) formula for naming the tenses independent of their meaning.

lucas-sp - thank you for agreeing with one of my statements - it proves you've at least read what I said. 

I'll continue by discussing your _"He's broken that same window every week for the past year" (which is why I now think of him as a confirmed vandal and why I'm trying to get him arrested)."_

Surely you're not seriously saying that the 'current state resulting from a past action' is that I think someone is a vandal? I used the window example as a direct reply to what Einstein said. Here's an example that says nothing about vandalism.

_"I have walked the same route to the shops for as long as I can remember."_

Can you tell even the slightest thing about my current state from that statement? Am I currently at the shops? Am I currently walking? Have I stopped walking? The answer is you just don't know.

If you reply that I am currently in the state of having walked to the shops in the past..., then (a) you are discussing the past and (b) you have imparted zero information that wasn't contained in the bare statement itself..


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## Giorgio Spizzi

Hullo, everyone.

Interesting discussion.

Not very often do the labels of Tenses faithfully - or rationally - represent all the different Time configuations.
In this respect, English is in a better situation than other languages - mine own native tongue, to name one.

English has maintained the "noun" Perfect that existed in Latin: a Tense which, in the classical era, was "synthetic", ie, made up of ONE word. It was emplyed to narrate past FACTS ("HosteM cepi" = "I captured the enemy"). This far, nothing far removed from present-day English Past Tense.

But languages evolve and so did Latin, which developed another Perfect - an analythic Perfect this time - made up of 
TWO words: the Present Tense of HABERE (have) or ESSE (be) and the Past Participle of the main verb. Example: "HosteM CaptuM habeo". (Note that also the Past Participle is in the Accusative case, to show its adjectival nature). 

This sentence was not pronounced to narrate a fact or an event, but was an announcement that the enemy was in 
my hands in the condition of "captured". 

In other words, one Perfect for Facts; another Perfect for the Present Result of Past Facts.

The funny thing is that most Neo-latin languages after a while started to use the two Perfects interchangeably, and nowadays in Italian, French, etc. - and German for good measure - use their respective forms of a "new" pattern (Habeo captum hostem) even when they refer to a past event which has no connection with the Present (Time ).
Only in and around Florence, Italy do they still make the distiction that English - of ALL languages - has maintained.

All this is an oversimplification of the story, of course, and I apologize to all Language Historians.

Best.

GS


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## bennymix

Biffo, I believe this point was addressed (boozer post #15._    Further, no-one has commented on my foolproof (I believe) formula for naming the tenses independent of their meaning._

I think there's an interplay between constructions and meaning, but your basic emphasis seems ill chosen.  Of course it's foolproof.    Here's a similar foolproof way of telling is something you see is a dog:  Identify the owner and find out his vet's name.  Go to the vet's file, and see if the label "dog" is applied, at the head of the file.
How do you tell if a kid is a boy?   Listen when his/her parent offers praise.  If the parent says,  "Good boy!"  it's a boy.  Almost completely foolproof!


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## Einstein

Biffo said:


> _"I have walked the same route to the shops for as long as I can remember."_
> 
> Can you tell even the slightest thing about my current state from that statement? Am I currently at the shops? Am I currently walking? Have I stopped walking? The answer is you just don't know.


We can't say what you are doing in this instant, but this is true in general. If I say "I'm reading an interesting book", you don't know whether I'm reading it in this instant or on and off in the present period, so this is not a problem limited to the present perfect. What we *can *say from the above example is that this habit has continued up to the present (whether it will now continue or stop we don't know).

Perhaps *you *should tell *us *why you choose to say "I have walked" and not "I walked".

Please note that I've made some additions to my previous post.


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## Chasint

Einstein said:


> What it does imply is that the habit of window-breaking is continuing. *This *is the reference to the present state of things. My reference was to a single event, yours to a series of events. Obviously there will be a difference in the meaning conveyed by the present perfect...


It implies no such thing.

_"He has broken my window every week for the past year."
"Can no-one stop him?"
"Yes, he was caught on camera and has been put in jail."
_
I'm using tenses correctly but there is no implication that the window breaking is continuing.


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## Giorgio Spizzi

I feel I should add that, being "Perfect" a NOUN, we should consider "Present", "Past", etc. as adjectives describing the noun. In other words, the Present Perfect is the PERFECT which has to do with the PRESENT moment of speaking.

Also, the Latins had two Conjugations: the INFECTUM and the PERFECTUM.
I've been "entertaining" you on the latter.

GS


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## Chasint

Einstein said:


> We can't say what you are doing in this instant, but this is true in general. If I say "I'm reading an interesting book", you don't know whether I'm reading it in this instant or on and off in the present period, so this is not a problem limited to the present perfect. What we *can *say from the above example is that this habit has continued up to the present (whether it will now continue or stop we don't know).
> 
> Perhaps *you *should tell *us *why you choose to say "I have walked" and not "I walked".
> 
> Please note that I've made some additions to my previous post.


I'll tell you why I said it that way. I'm a native English speaker and that's the way I talk. Can you suggest a better way to say it? Are you really suggesting that I say:

_"I walked the same route to the shops for as long as I can remember." ?
_
That just sounds weird to me. 

Maybe we are discovering the difference between those who teach and rely on prescriptive grammar rules and those who (like me) believe that descriptive grammar is more useful.


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## bennymix

I agree with your last sentence, Biffo, post # 30.  
_
there is no implication that the window breaking is continuing.                 _


But the pattern of breaking is of relevance to the speaker, who is, as you say, speaking, present tense, of a vandal in the neighborhood.    The present perfect is odd, in that it's really neutral as to future continuation, though on balance, "I've studied music for 5 years" implies continuance. Yet it's possible to say to my music teacher,  "I've studied with you for 5 years as of today, and today is my last day.  I've outgrown you."


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## bennymix

_Biffo//"I walked the same route to the shops for as long as I can remember." ?
_
That just sounds weird to me. It means that I was continuously walking since time immemorial.//

Good points, Biffo.  It sounds weird. But again your own words, for the 'I have walked' case,  "I can remember" speaks of a present situation of remembering the countless walks of the same route.


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## Chasint

bennymix said:


> Biffo, I believe this point was addressed (boozer post #15._ Further, no-one has commented on my foolproof (I believe) formula for naming the tenses independent of their meaning._
> I think there's an interplay between constructions and meaning, but your basic emphasis seems ill chosen. Of course it's foolproof. Here's a similar foolproof way of telling is something you see is a dog: Identify the owner and find out his vet's name. Go to the vet's file, and see if the label "dog" is applied, at the head of the file.
> How do you tell if a kid is a boy? Listen when his/her parent offers praise. If the parent says, "Good boy!" it's a boy. Almost completely foolproof!


My search intially was to find a motivation, any motivation, for what I considered to be a nonsensical name for a past tense, namely the Present Perfect. I could see no connection or rationale. Then Beryl gave me a clue by saying that the tense of the auxiliary verb was a factor. I generalised and realised that simply by listing the simple tenses of the auxiliary verbs making up the 'perfect' verbs, one could derive the name correctly.

This wasn't a trivial discovery for me - it answered my question.

What I am arguing about now is different. Others on this thread want to justify the use of the words 'present' and 'perfect' by talking about current consequences. I see this as unnecessary as well as erroneous and confusing.


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## Chasint

bennymix said:


> _Biffo//"I walked the same route to the shops for as long as I can remember." ?
> _
> That just sounds weird to me. It means that I was continuously walking since time immemorial.//
> 
> Good points, Biffo.  It sounds weird. But again your own words, for the 'I have walked' case,  "I can remember" speaks of a present situation of remembering the countless walks of the same route.


Maybe so but that is not unique to the Past Perfect. What about this.

_"What can you remember about those years?"
"I remember that I walked the same route many times."_

There I used the past simple "walked". That affects my current memories. What's the difference?


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## lucas-sp

This is not quite right.


Biffo said:


> My search intially was to find a motivation, any motivation, for what I considered to be a nonsensical name for a past tense, namely the Present Perfect. I could see no connection or rationale. Then Beryl gave me a clue by saying that the tense of the auxiliary verb was a factor. I generalised and realised that simply by listing* the simple tenses of the auxiliary verbs* making up the 'perfect' verbs, one could derive the name correctly.
> 
> What I am arguing about now is different. *Others on this thread want to justify the use of the words 'present' and 'perfect' by talking about current consequences. I see this as unnecessary as well as erroneous and confusing.*


Well... It's not that the tense of the auxiliary verb is "perfect." Instead, it's that the _aspect of the main verb is "perfect." _(In fact, in "My wallet has fallen on the floor," the tense of the auxiliary verb is _present_; the main verb is "to fall.")

The reason to discuss "current consequences" is to distinguish between the present perfect (_present_ consequences of completed actions), the past perfect (_past_ consequences of completed actions), and the future perfect (_future_ consequences of completed actions).

I suggest you think about _why_ you would say "I've walked these same streets for as long as I can remember." I think you'll see that there is, in fact, an implied current consequence of an action completed in the past.


----------



## Chasint

Giorgio Spizzi said:


> Hullo, everyone.
> 
> Interesting discussion.
> 
> Not very often do the labels of Tenses faithfully - or rationally - represent all the different Time configuations.
> In this respect, English is in a better situation than other languages - mine own native tongue, to name one.
> 
> English has maintained the "noun" Perfect that existed in Latin: a Tense which, in the classical era, was "synthetic", ie, made up of ONE word. It was emplyed to narrate past FACTS ("HosteM cepi" = "I captured the enemy"). This far, nothing far removed from present-day English Past Tense.
> 
> ...GS


Apologies for not answering your post. It's quite a lot to take in. Maybe I'll come back to it when I've finished arguing with everyone else!


----------



## Chasint

lucas-sp said:


> ...Well... It's not that the tense of the auxiliary verb is "perfect." Instead, it's that the _aspect of the main verb is "perfect." _(In fact, in "My wallet has fallen on the floor," the tense of the auxiliary verb is _present_; the main verb is "to fall.")...


I already stated that (with examples) in my post #14



lucas-sp said:


> ...The reason to discuss "current consequences" is to distinguish between the present perfect (_present_ consequences of completed actions), the past perfect (_past_ consequences of completed actions), and the future perfect (_future_ consequences of completed actions).
> 
> I suggest you think about _why_ you would say "I've walked these same streets for as long as I can remember." I think you'll see that there is, in fact, an implied current consequence of an action completed in the past.


Okay. I'll think about this. I'm doing other things for a while and I'll be back later.


----------



## bennymix

I think I'd go with 'current relevance,' more than 'current consequence'  IF that's meant to imply some causal impact on the present/current situation.   Biffo's example, _"I've walked these same streets for as long as I can remember."   _implies there is someone, the speaker, who for some reason is recollecting the past pattern.

The problem with constructed, as opposed to 'natural' or 'in the wild' examples, is that they're limited.  In some cases they reflect more about the ingenuity of the proposer, than about current, general patterns of usage.


----------



## boozer

Biffo said:


> ... You still haven't answered my question. Do you claim that the simple past has no relevance in the present? ...


Yes, the past simple tense also has some relevance in the present depending on context and situation, but that is neither its defining characteristic, nor its main focus.




Biffo said:


> What I am arguing about now is different. Others on this thread want to justify the use of the words 'present' and 'perfect' by talking about current consequences. I see this as unnecessary as well as erroneous and confusing.





Biffo said:


> I generalised and realised that simply by listing the simple tenses of the auxiliary verbs making up the 'perfect' verbs, one could derive the name correctly.


Of course, it is possible to arrive at the correct name of the tense by analysing the separate components of the verb phrase. It is also possible to infer that there is an elephant hidden in the woods by catching a glimpse of its trunk.  The naming conventions of verb tenses are surely linked to the form (the outer expressions - have and -ing). However, the names really represent the nature of verb tenses, not the form which this nature takes - they stand for time sense (present/past/future) and aspects (perfective/progressive) that actually modify the meaning carried by the main verb. 

As regards current consequences/relevance, etc. being a red herring, I think the issue has been more than adequately addressed by Benny, Lucas and Einstein. 

And finally, Biffo, I really see no reason to dismiss 'received knowledge' with contempt just because it is 'received knowledge'. Linguistics would be nowhere if everyone had relied exclusively on their own trial/error methodology and analytical skills. Also R. Quirk is one of the greatest English linguists and grammarians, if not the greatest, and is anything but a prescriptivist. Every single word of his Comprehensive Grammar is, to me, an accurate description that includes not only usages largely accepted as correct, but ones looked down upon, even stigmatised. 

I hope you were not complaining about the level of this discussion because I joined in. If you think I was imposing I will erase all my posts.


----------



## Chasint

boozer said:


> (a) Yes, the past simple tense also has some relevance in the present depending on context and situation, but that is neither its defining characteristic, nor its main focus.
> (b) Of course, it is possible to arrive at the correct name of the tense by analysing the separate components of the verb phrase.
> (c) It is also possible to infer that there is an elephant hidden in the woods by catching a glimpse of its trunk.  The naming conventions of verb tenses are surely linked to the form (the outer expressions - have and -ing).  However, the names really represent the nature of verb tenses, not the form which this nature takes - they stand for time sense (present/past/future) and aspects (perfective/progressive) that actually modify the meaning carried by the main verb.
> 
> 
> (d) As regards current consequences/relevance, etc. being a red herring, I think the issue has been more than adequately addressed by Benny, Lucas and Einstein.
> 
> 
> (e) And finally, Biffo, I really see no reason to dismiss 'received knowledge' with contempt just because it is 'received knowledge'. Linguistics would be nowhere if everyone had relied exclusively on their own trial/error methodology and analytical skills. Also R. Quirk is one of the greatest English linguists and grammarians, if not the greatest, and is anything but a prescriptivist. Every single word of his Comprehensive Grammar is, to me, an accurate description that includes not only usages largely accepted as correct, but ones looked down upon, even stigmatised.
> 
> 
> (f) I hope you were not complaining about the level of this discussion because I joined in. If you think I was imposing I will erase all my posts.




(a) I continue to maintain that all tenses relate and have relevance to the present. That is the defining characteristic of any tense and is its main focus. Tenses have no meaning at all except in relation to the 'present', i.e. the time at which they are uttered.
(b) There is no 'of course' about it. It just happens to work in English. There are other languages whose tenses cannot be analysed in that way. It works for us precisely because we use auxiliary verbs. I now strongly suspect that this correspondence was the sole motivation for the names of such tenses in the first place. Research will confirm or discount this.
(c) That is a facile and inaccurate comparison. The elephant is in clear sight and I recognise it, not by its DNA but by its outer form.
(d) That's the precise point of my disagreement. I'm not going to be persuaded by its mere repetition.
(e) I wasn't aware of any contempt. That is your subjective impression. If rules work for me I respect them, if they don't then I reserve the right to challenge them. Most human progress is made by challenging current wisdom. So far I haven't challenged Quirk's doctrine directly at all. I've only challenged other people's interpretation of his work. When I've read Quirk myself I'll be in a position to comment.
(f) I'm frankly amazed by that accusation. I have argued against you and some other contributors to this thread (bennymix, lucas-sp and einstein) with equal conviction and equal attention to detail. What makes you think I have singled you out in any way?


----------



## Chasint

I have been doing a little reading. Here's a paragraph I found interesting:

_The English perfect has developed from originally resultative sentences with be (John is gone) and have (I have the enemy bound). Such resultative sentences express states and/or possession over states. The change from resultative meaning to perfect meaning comes about due to a semantic change “as a result of which the responsibility for the action leading to the state is ascribed to the subject” (König 1995: 164). In other languages (though not in English), the perfect is also used as a narrative tense, thus gradually replacing (and presumably eventually eliminating) the past tense (preterite). _
http://www.glottopedia.org/index.php/Tenses_of_English

I like this evolutionary view of tenses. Once my intial question was answered (in post #2), this absence of the resultative meaning is what I was trying to explore in this thread without knowing the terminology.

It seems to me that others on this thread have been arguing from a purely resultative view of the 'perfect'. I see this as an outdated or at least insufficient point of view.


----------



## berndf

Biffo,

Bennymix, natkretep and boozer are right: The verb form is called called present perfect because its _tense _is _present _and its _aspect _is _perfect_. _Perfect aspect_ means that the verb form describes an action that has been completed at the time of the tense of the verb form or a state caused by such an action that persists at the time. Therefore,
_Present perfect _means that the action has been completed presently._
Past perfect_ means that the action had been completed in the past.
_Future perfect_ means that the action will have been completed in the future.

_Past tense_, aka _preterite_, is a verb form that is _perfect*ive* _in aspect and _past _in tense. The _perfective _aspect describes an action viewed as a single event in time. As the preterite is past in tense, it describes an single action in the past.

The_ continuous form_ expresses the _imperfective_ aspect. The _imperfective_ aspect describes an event as ongoing at the time the tense expresses. I.e., _past continuous_ describes an ongoing action in the past.

As you can see, the meanings of verb forms of the indicative is defined by aspect and tense. The past tense may have relevance for the present but this is not what the verb form expresses while the present perfect expresses (not implies) that the completed action has relevance for the present.



Biffo said:


> It seems to me that others on this thread have  been arguing from a purely resultative view of the 'perfect'. I see this  as an outdated or at least insufficient point of view.


The resultative is a special case of the perfect aspect. To repeat what I said above: "_Perfect aspect_ means that the verb form describes an action  that has been completed at the time of the tense of the verb form *or* a  state caused by such an action that persists at the time."


----------



## Chasint

berndf said:


> Biffo,
> 
> Bennymix, natkretep and boozer are right: The verb form is called called present perfect because its _tense _is _present _and its _aspect _is _perfect_. _Perfect aspect_ means that the verb form describes an action that has been completed at the time of the tense of the verb form or a stated caused by such an action that persists at the time. Therefore,
> _Present perfect _means that the action has been completed presently._
> Present perfect_ means that the action had been completed in the past.
> _Future perfect_ means that the action will have been completed in the future.
> 
> _Past tense_, aka _preterite_, is a verb form that is _perfect*ive* _in aspect and _past _in tense. The _perfective _aspect describes an action viewed as a single event in time. As the preterite is past in tense, it describes an single action in the past.
> 
> The_ continuous form_ expresses the _imperfective_ aspect. The _imperfective_ aspect describes an event as ongoing at the time the tense expresses. I.e., _past continuous_ describes an ongoing action in the past.
> 
> As you can see, the meanings of verb forms of the indicative is defined by aspect and tense. The past tense may have relevance for the present but this is not what the verb form expresses while the present perfect expresses (not implies) that the completed action has relevance for the present.


You made a typo - I've highlighted it.
What you have just said is not at issue as far as I am concerned. However I'm interested that you support the others.  It was their broader claims that made me uneasy, i.e that the Present Perfect had something to say about the present state of affairs. I have provided counterexamples to show that this is not universally the case.

I maintain that, regardless of the naming of the tense, it is still a past tense as used in present day English. This is due to a semantic shift of "to have" from a resultative towards a narrative sense. Historically things may have been different.


----------



## lucas-sp

Personally, I very much sympathize with Biffo on the question of "present relevance" (or "past relevance," in the case of the past perfect, etc.). I immediately want to point out that, well, we wouldn't be saying anything right now if we didn't think it was somehow relevant to our act of speaking - although I do wonder if that's really true, given that people (myself included) say a lot of irrelevant things. And then I want to know what exactly makes the relevance of the present perfect different from this generalized field of "relevance."

So I would suggest, just to pacify my own inner whiner, one little revision to berndf's statement:





berndf said:


> "_Perfect aspect_ means that the verb form describes an action  that has been completed at the time of the tense of the verb form *or* a  state caused by such an action that persists at the time."


What if we said, instead:





> "_Perfect aspect_ *emphasizes* that the verb form describes an action that has been completed at the time of the tense of the verb form, but that has had some causal effect on a state, on a condition, or on an action that persists at the time of the verb."


It's not that the present perfect is the only way to describe completed actions that are relevant to the present, but instead that, by using the present perfect, a speaker *emphasizes to his/her interlocutor* that a completed action has a *particular (explicit or implicit) relevance to the present* that the speaker expects his/her interlocutor to understand. (We can generalize this to the past perfect, the future perfect, etc.: those forms emphasize that a completed action has a particular (explicit or implicit) relevance to the past/future/etc.) 

This allows us both to understand the reason why the present perfect is a _present tense_ verb (and not a past tense verb), and by describing the present perfect _rhetorically_ we allow for a lot of flexibility in terms of choosing, identifying, describing, and evaluating "relevance."

_EDIT: And, in so doing, we side-step the issue of whether or not a completed action "really is/was" "relevant," since instead of relying on what looks like an epistemological criterion of "relevance" we instead introduce the speaker's own notion of "relevance" and desire to emphasize that "relevance," to put more weight on the possible present relevance of a completed action._


----------



## berndf

Biffo said:


> What you have just said is not at issue as far as I am concerned.


The topic of this thread is that you wanted to know why the present perfect is called present perfect. As others did before, I described why it is called present perfect.

As a moderator, I have to ask you to stick to the question you asked when you opened the thread. If you want to discuss a different topic, please open a new thread. Thank you.


----------



## berndf

lucas-sp said:


> It's not that the present perfect is the only way to describe completed actions that are relevant to the present..


We have no disagreement. The past tense *may or may not *describe past actions _*which are*_ relevant for the present. The present perfect describes the action _*explicitly as*_ relevant for the present.


----------



## Chasint

berndf said:


> The topic of this thread is that you wanted to know why the present perfect is called present perfect. As others did before, I described why it is called present perfect.
> 
> As a moderator, I have to ask you to stick to the question you asked when you opened the thread. If you want to discuss a different topic, please open a new thread. Thank you.


If as a moderator you decide that I am straying off-topic then of course I accept your authority.

However I didn't say that your answer was irrelevant, I said (or intended to say) that I had no issue with it. In other words I accept what you say as a plausible explanation. 

However my argument stems from what some of the others are arguing is a motivation for the tense's name, namely its implication for the present. That I do have an issue with.

________________________________________________
EDIT
I see that lucas-sp is addressing this very issue so I will read his latest post very carefully before replying.


----------



## berndf

Biffo said:


> However my argument stems from what some of the others the others are arguing is a motivation for the tense's name, namely its implication for the present. That I do have an issue with.


There I agree with you. It is not the _implication _for the present that matters but what the verb form _expresses_ about the present; or, as Lucas put it, _emphasizes_.


----------



## lucas-sp

berndf said:


> There I agree with you. It is not the _implication _for the present that matters but what the verb form _expresses_ about the present; or, as Lucas put it, _emphasizes_.


This may be off-topic, but I just want to give one other example of how taking a rhetorical view of the matter helps avoid these apparently philosophico-epistemological impasses... at least for me.

I feel the same way about the subjunctive. It irks me when the subjunctive is described as "the mood used to describe states of unreality," as if we couldn't use any other mood to describe unreal things, or as if sometimes people don't say things that they think are real that are actually unreal or vice-versa. If instead we describe the subjunctive as "a mood used by a speaker to _emphasize his/her conception of the unreality of certain actions or states to his/her interlocutor_," then we solve the problem without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We don't have to eliminate "unreality," but instead we can frame it as a choice made (consciously or unconsciously) by a speaker.

It's obvious (to me at least) that we can't eliminate the _present tense_ from the present perfect; otherwise we'd have no way of distinguishing it from the past perfect and future perfect. So describing it as a "past tense" is unhelpful to me (and apparently to most linguists and grammarians, although not to all language teachers who might find that strategy pedagogically productive in certain situations). But we can find a way to describe the _aspect_​ of the perfect that works in all tenses without eliminating their key distinctions of past/present/future.


----------



## berndf

lucas-sp said:


> It irks me when the subjunctive is described as "the mood used to describe states of unreality," as if we couldn't use any other mood to describe unreal things, or as if sometimes people don't say things that they think are real that are actually unreal or vice-versa. If instead we describe the subjunctive as "a mood used by a speaker to _emphasize his/her conception of the unreality of certain actions or states to his/her interlocutor_," then we solve the problem without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We don't have to eliminate "unreality," but instead we can frame it as a choice made (consciously or unconsciously) by a speaker.


Please be careful to keep in mind the logical difference between _describing unreal things_ (=_things that happen to be unreal_) and _describing unreality_ (=_expressing the irreality of something_).


----------



## lucas-sp

That's what I'm trying to do... But you get explanations about the subjunctive all the time that boil down to "it's a contrary-to-fact situation," using the copula "is" to gloss over the notion of expression that is so key. Blablabla off topic blablabla. Anyway, it does seem to me like the notion of expression, or even of "states of relevance," neatly and productively solves the problem that is coming up here in relation to the perfect aspect.


----------



## Ёж!

Biffo said:


> _"I have walked the same route to the shops for as long as I can remember."_
> 
> Can you tell even the slightest thing about my current state from that statement?


    Sure. It's the state of your mind: you're recalling that you did that. What the focus of your sentence is is not that you walked the same route many times, but that now you're in the situation to tell that you walked the same route. So, I think, the meaning of perfect clauses is that they describe situations (namely the kind of situations that happen because of something having happened earlier), while simple clauses describe events, i.e., they go to tell what actions happen.

    Talking of 'implications' or 'relevance' is indeed wrong: if you say that you killed a butterfly yesterday, implying that an earthquake will happen fifty years later, this does not make your clause a future tense. But the meaning of the present perfect is that it talks both _of_ the current situation and _of_ the earlier events.


----------



## bennymix

The present perfect is often interchangeable with the simple past.
But are there differences?   We've focussed too much upon the 
first person.   Let's look at third person.  Two variations I've
written.

_*1.* He walked along the road. He realized that the village was far away and
knew it would be many hours before he got there. He shivered.
*He has forgotten his coat.*  Nonetheless, he did not slow down,
but forged ahead.


*2.* He walks along the road. He realizes that the village was far away and
knows it will be many hours before he gets there. He shivers.
[He realizes] *He has forgotten his coat.*  Nonetheless, he does not slow down,
but forges ahead._

In 1. the present perfect stands out like a sore thumb [ADDED:and is a defect]. The simple past
would be preferable, in my opinion.

In 2, the present tense, it fits.  Why?   In *his* present time he's shivering.
Then the narrator tells why, and the present perfect allows that
NOT to stand out uncomfortably.

In the variation [brackets], he himself realizes why. Indeed,
he may well say to himself, "I've forgotten my jacket!" although "I forgot
my jacket" would do.

This is an attempt to illustrate present consequence, present relevance,
etc.   But of course the 'present' is in the past, at the time he shivered.


----------



## berndf

bennymix said:


> This is an attempt to illustrate present consequence, present relevance,
> etc.   But of course the 'present' is in the past, at the time he shivered.


This is because you use historic present as a narrative tense. The _tense_ of the verb form present perfect is present, not the _time_. _Tense_ is a grammatical category not an actual point in time.

Here is an example where a past action bears consequence on the present and this consequence is essential for what you're trying to say, yet the present perfect is not used in English while it would be perfectly ok in French or German:
_Ten years go, he *has bought a new house in which he still lives._
This is so because the aspect is _perfective _and not _perfect _(see my #44 for a definition or here and here), a distinction that is observed in English but which has faded in French and German.


----------



## boozer

Biffo said:


> (e) I wasn't aware of any contempt. That is your subjective impression...


Indeed, it is my subjective impression - see, internet communication is a distorted kind of communication and I may even have said this before. My subjective impression is corroborated by comments like:



Biffo said:


> I have to admit I'm a little disappointed with the standard of debate on this thread. Mostly I have been battered with a simple repetition of received knowledge. It is the received knowledge that I'm challenging. Further, no-one has commented on my foolproof (I believe) formula for naming the tenses independent of their meaning.


and the implication, well the subjective implication, that people repeating received knowledge are possibly in an inferior position because of being unable to digest, analyse or challenge this received knowledge even when its falsity stares them in the face. 




Biffo said:


> So far I haven't challenged Quirk's doctrine directly at all. I've only challenged other people's interpretation of his work. When I've read Quirk myself I'll be in a position to comment.



No, you did not challenge him directly, you only said:



Biffo said:


> Maybe we are discovering the difference between those who teach and rely on prescriptive grammar rules and those who (like me) believe that descriptive grammar is more useful.


It is really immaterial whether this was a reference directly to Quirk or the one that quoted him, i.e. me. The interpretation of Quirk's doctrine, as you phrase it, means little, if anything at all - he has been quoted saying precisely what almost everyone else said. There is no interpretation in that. It all boils down to your willingness to lack thereof to accept that, consciously or not, when you use the present perfect tense, you somehow see this as relevant (or, unlike the simple past, relevant in a special, emphatic way, as Lucas has suggested) to the present time/situation/context. I respect your unwilligness to accept this doctrine because you either do not understand it or you understand it but do not believe in it. However, you should also respect the fact that others have adopted it as their own not because they are unable to challenge its falsity or because they cannot come up with anything better, but because they truly understand it and believe in it. 

All examples and counterexamples given by you and other contributors lead to one thing only, as far as I am concerned - complete confirmation of the doctrine.


----------



## lucas-sp

I also want to point out, briefly, that saying "The present perfect is used to describe a completed action that has continued relevance in the present" is, by itself, not _a priori _descriptivist or prescriptivist_. _In fact, stated in that form, it looks much more descriptivist than prescriptivist to me.

(A prescriptivist phrasing might be "Use the present perfect when describing completed actions in the past that have continued relevance in the present.")

I don't think accusing people of descriptivism was a particularly charitable move in this argument, and I don't think it gets us anywhere to dwell on it too much.


----------



## bennymix

Berndf:  Yes, I'm aware that 'perfective' and 'perfect' differ.   I wonder if you'd comment on my analysis of the two stories; why the pres perf. works nicely in one, and not the other (in my opinion). 

Thanks.


----------



## lucas-sp

bennymix said:


> I wonder if you'd comment on my analysis of the two stories; why the pres perf. works nicely in one, and not the other (in my opinion).


Well, to be honest, there need to be _three_ stories.





> _*1.* He walked along the road. He realized that the village was far away and knew it would be many hours before he got there. He shivered. [He realized] *He has forgotten his coat.* Nonetheless, he did not slow down, but forged ahead. __
> 
> *2.* He walks along the road. He realizes that the village was far away and knows it will be many hours before he gets there. He shivers. [He realizes] *He has forgotten his coat.* Nonetheless, he does not slow down, but forges ahead. _
> _*3.* He walked along the road. He realized that the village was far away and knew it would be many hours before he got there. He shivered. [He realized] *He had forgotten his coat.* Nonetheless, he did not slow down, but forged ahead. _


When the narration is in the present, you need to use a present perfect. When the narration is in the past, you need to use a past perfect.

This is a good demonstration of why the present perfect is actually a present verb tense and not a past verb tense (although it does refer to actions that were completed before the present).

EDIT: Of course, in narration you can occasionally flash into the _historic present_. So another option is possible:





> 4_*.* He walked along the road. He realized that the village was far away and knew it would be many hours before he got there. He shivers. [He realizes] *He has forgotten his coat.* Nonetheless, he does not slow down, but forges ahead. _


If we slip into a historic present sometime in the passage for vividness, we can use a historic present perfect as well.


----------



## Ёж!

boozer said:


> It is really immaterial whether this was a reference directly to Quirk or the one that quoted him, i.e. me. The interpretation of Quirk's doctrine, as you phrase it, means little, if anything at all - he has been quoted saying precisely what almost everyone else said. There is no interpretation in that. It all boils down to your willingness to lack thereof to accept that, consciously or not, when you use the present perfect tense, you somehow see this as relevant (or, unlike the simple past, relevant in a special, emphatic way, as Lucas has suggested) to the present time/situation/context. [...]


I must admit that explanations, based on relevance to the present (_I just walked out of the store_), are really confusing. I, as a learner, was never able to understand them until I realised that the action, in order to be stated with the present perfect, has not only to have relevance to the present, but directly define the present condition that the speaker is talking about. The reason for confusion is that they, in fact, don't work for English; they work for languages like Italian where you have to explain the difference between _uscii_ and _sono uscito_. I.e. the present perfect is about the present, while the _passato prossimo_ is about the (near) past.


----------



## berndf

bennymix said:


> I wonder if you'd comment on my analysis of the two stories; why the pres perf. works nicely in one, and not the other (in my opinion).


I did . I said the present perfect was applicable in the 2nd sentence for the following reason:


berndf said:


> This is because you use historic present as a narrative tense. The _tense_ of the verb form present perfect is present, not the _time_. _Tense_ is a grammatical category not an actual point in time.


I.e. the present _tense _is here used to describe events in the past and that's why you use present rather than past perfect (see _historical present_).

In your first sentence, I would actually prefer past perfect over simple past. But _present_ perfect is certainly not applicable there.


----------



## bennymix

Thanks, berndf.  I think we're in general concordance.
I agree that past perf works nicely in my story 1.


----------



## berndf

bennymix said:


> I think we're in general concordance.


Yes, I think so too.


----------



## Einstein

Back in post #29 I said,


> Perhaps *you *should tell* us *why you choose to say "I have walked" and not "I walked".


Biffo replied,


Biffo said:


> I'll tell you why I said it that way. I'm a native English speaker and that's the way I talk. Can you suggest a better way to say it? Are you really suggesting that I say:
> _"I walked the same route to the shops for as long as I can remember." ?_
> That just sounds weird to me.


I'm afraid he misunderstood my point. It wasn't a rhetorical question; it sounds weird to me too and I wasn't suggesting Biffo should say anything different. But unfortunately if a student asks me why he should say in that sentence "I have walked" rather than "I walked" I can't reply, "Because 'I walked' would sound weird."

What has been lacking throughout this discussion is an alternative explanation by Biffo as to the function of what we have up to now called the Present Perfect and his own reason for preferring it to the simple past in certain cases. If he provides a convincing explanation, we can change the name, no problem.


----------



## berndf

Einstein said:


> But unfortunately if a student asks me why he should say in that sentence "I have walked" rather than "I walked" I can't reply, "Because 'I walked' would sound weird."


Wikipedia describes it this way:


> It may also refer to an ongoing state or habitual action, particularly in saying _for how long_, or _since when_, something is the case. For exampleI *have lived* in Paris for five years.
> He *has held *the record since he won his Olympic gold.
> We *have eaten *breakfast together every morning since our honeymoon.​


This is actually one of the more difficult uses of the English perfect because it does not quite fit the usual description of the perfect aspect as describing a completed action. It is actually quite counter-intuitive for speakers of language where the present perfect became a past-tense-equivalent like German or French. In German, we would actually use present tense here.


----------



## Einstein

berndf said:


> Wikipedia describes it this way:
> This is actually one of the more difficult uses of the English perfect because it does not quite fit the usual description of the perfect aspect as describing a completed action. It is actually quite counter-intuitive for speakers of language where the present perfect became a past-tense-equivalent like German or French. In German, we would actually use present tense here.


Berndf, I think we all agree about this, but the discussion with biffo has arisen because he doesn't accept the connection with the present as the distinguishing characteristic of the tense with "have/has" + past participle. I am therefore asking him to give another reason why he chooses this form rather than the past simple.
Originally the discussion was about a sentence like "I've never eaten lobster"; why this form rather than "I never ate lobster"? The use with "for" and "since" is really a digression; as you say, in most European languages the present is used in this case. So perhaps we can ask biffo to ignore my question above and answer it with reference to the case of the lobster.


----------



## berndf

Einstein said:


> The use with "for" and "since" is really a digression; as you say, in most European languages the present is used in this case. So perhaps we can ask biffo to ignore my question above and answer it with reference to the case of the lobster.


On the contrary. This is probably the most striking example to show that the present perfect is a present tense and not a past tense verb form.


----------



## Einstein

berndf said:


> On the contrary. This is probably the most striking example to show that the present perfect is a present tense and not a past tense verb form.


All right, I just wanted to keep things simple. But we'll see what biffo has to say.


----------



## Peterdg

I have read most of this discussion (not all, sorry for that), but I'd like to give an anecdote about this. It's not really about English, but I think it's applicable too.

Dutch, like English, has the same tenses: present perfect and imperfect; the use is not always the same between the languages, but for a big part comparable.

In the "Algemene Nederlandse Spraakkunst" (="The general Dutch grammar"), second edition, edited by "De Nederlandse taalunie" and a couple of universities, and considered to be the Dutch grammar bible, they say "We don't actually know what exactly triggers the use of one tense (present perfect/imperfect) or the other in all cases..." and I think that is a very wise statement.


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## Giorgio Spizzi

Hullo, Peterdg.
The news that English has an Imperfect Tense reminds me of the "Close Encounters of the Third Kind".
If it were true, that would be the News of the Third Millennium.
GS


----------



## Peterdg

Giorgio Spizzi said:


> Hullo, Peterdg.
> The news that English has an Imperfect Tense reminds me of the "Close Encounters of the Third Kind".
> If it were true, that would be the News of the Third Millennium.
> GS


What's in a name? It is just my unfortunate translation (I'm too involved in Spanish, I'm afraid). What is the actual name of the tense in English? It probably is somewhere in the thread... Is it simple past? Or is that also from Spanish?


----------



## berndf

Giorgio Spizzi said:


> Hullo, Peterdg.
> The news that English has an Imperfect Tense reminds me of the "Close Encounters of the Third Kind".
> If it were true, that would be the News of the Third Millennium.
> GS


In Dutch and German it used to be customary to call the simple past _imperfect_.This is obviously a misnomer and not used by grammarians any more. But people of our (Peterdg and myself) age group occasionally still use the term because we learned it like that in school.
________________________________
PS: Crossed with #72:


Peterdg said:


> What is the actual name of the tense in English?  It probably is somewhere in the thread... Is it simple past? Or is that  also from Spanish?


Modern grammarians call the verb form that exists in all Germanic languages _preterit(e) _(<Latin_ praeteritum=the passed by_). In English you also say _simple past_ or _past tense_.


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## Einstein

The simple past covers both imperfect and perfective meanings.
The lack of distinction forces us to choose other forms:
- My father used to say... (imperfect meaning)
- My father once said... (perfective meaning)
If we say "my father said...", then it's not clear from the verb form which one we mean (of course it may be crystal clear from the rest of the context).

For this reason we limit the name to simple past without talking about perfective and imperfect. GS is right.


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## fdb

I think the original question was about why the “present perfect” is called by this name, in other words: a question about the history of grammatical terminology in English. There is a whole book on this topic, namely:

Ian Michael, _English grammatical categories and the tradition to 1800_, Cambridge 1970

You might find that some pages from it are available on google books. You will learn from it that the term “present perfect” was invented in the early 18th century and has its basis in one school of Latin grammar.


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## Giorgio Spizzi

Which is what I tried to explain in a rather long - certainly boring- post in this same thread.

GS


----------



## Einstein

fdb said:


> The term “present perfect” was invented in the early 18th century and has its basis in one school of Latin grammar.


I actually think that "present perfect" is a reasonable term, but I shudder when I see attempts to analyse English grammar starting from Latin. Analogies can be useful (but only where valid!) but the Latin scholars went too far; there was/is even a school of thought that said you need to study Latin in order to understand English grammar!


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## Ben Jamin

Einstein said:


> I actually think that "present perfect" is a reasonable term, but I shudder when I see attempts to analyse English grammar starting from Latin. Analogies can be useful (but only where valid!) but the Latin scholars went too far; there was/is even a school of thought that said you need to study Latin in order to understand English grammar!


I met recently an English lady who is a teacher. She told me that grammar is *not* taught in English schools. She got her first informatiom about grammar while studying other languages. So yes, you have to learn for example Latin (or another language), to understand English grammar.
*
Moderator note: Please keep this thread about present perfect and its name in English and not about grammar in general. For a discussion about the usefulness of formal grammar, please refer this this thread.

*


----------



## berndf

fdb said:


> I think the original question was about why the “present perfect” is called by this name, in other words: a question about the history of grammatical terminology in English. There is a whole book on this topic, namely:
> 
> Ian Michael, _English grammatical categories and the tradition to 1800_, Cambridge 1970
> 
> You might find that some pages from it are available on google books. You will learn from it that the term “present perfect” was invented in the early 18th century and has its basis in one school of Latin grammar.


Which is, by the way, the logic I outlined in #44: a matrix structure of the orthogonal categories _tense _and _aspect_. Op. cit. p.408.


----------



## Peterdg

berndf said:


> In Dutch and German it used to be customary to call the simple past _imperfect_.This is obviously a misnomer and not used by grammarians any more. But people of our (Peterdg and myself) age group occasionally still use the term because we learned it like that in school.


Yes, indeed. "onvoltooid verleden tijd" ("unvollendete ..." = "imperfect"). I guess it must have been the same in Dutch and in German.

(PS. I only noticed now we are of the same age)


> ________________________________
> PS: Crossed with #72:
> Modern grammarians call the verb form that exists in all Germanic languages _preterit(e) _(<Latin_ praeteritum=the passed by_). In English you also say _simple past_ or _past tense_.


Thank you.

I just looked it up in the Algemene Nederlandse spraakkunst": They still call it  "onvoltooid verleden tijd" in Dutch.


----------



## berndf

Peterdg said:


> I just looked it up in the Algemene Nederlandse spraakkunst": They still call it  "onvoltooid verleden tijd" in Dutch.


Interesting. From modern German textbooks this has disappeared almost entirely.

The origin on this misnomer seems to lie in a classification scheme cited in the book mentioned by fdb on p.408 with only two aspects instead of three aspects as we know it today (_imperfect _vs. _perfect_ rather than _imperfective_ vs. _perfective_ vs. _perfect_).


----------



## Forero

Hi, Biffo.

I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment of the arguments put forth about the meaning and purpose of the Present Perfect. I may be misinterpreting the language of these arguments, but in my view even experts seem to have trouble distinguishing what a Present Perfect verb form says, means, or implies from what a sentence or context may suggest, hint at, or lead us to suspect. In particular a lot of otherwise excellent grammar reference works, and several good teachers on this forum, make statements to the effect that Present Perfect implies certain things about "actions" expressed, such as relevance to the present, completion, continuity, etc., but I have found this unhelpful in describing how I use Present Perfect and what my experience with other speakers and writers tells me they use it for. I think what may be happening in most of their examples of such things is something I call surmise or suggestion and others, I have recently learned, call implicature.

I understand that a lot is often said by what is not said, but I prefer to take a scientific tack, looking at literal meaning first and leaving figures of speech, surmise, and innuendo until we have a proper grasp of the grammar. Unfortunately, we do seem to be just where the Dutch experts (as Peterdg has quoted from _Algemene Nederlandse Spraakkunst_) are: we just don't actually know....

I suspect the term "Present Perfect" was never particularly accurate and was probably coined based on just what you have concluded: "Present" from the tense of the leading verb, and "Perfect" from the form of the "main" verb (a participle used variously for passive, perfect, or perfective ideas).

However, my "grammar sense" does tell me that "Present Perfect" is indeed present tense, not past, and that "Perfect" has something to do with time priority (in the sense of "before-ness", not importance).

I hope to explain more about this in my next post.


----------



## berndf

Forero said:


> I suspect the term "Present Perfect" was never particularly accurate and was probably coined based on just what you have concluded: "Present" from the tense of the leading verb, and "Perfect" from the form of the "main" verb (a participle used variously for passive, perfect, or perfective ideas).


I beg your pardon, but we have discussed tangible references in this thread already about how the term evolved and I think we are beyond "suspect" and "probably" (see here).


----------



## Forero

berndf said:


> I beg your pardon, but we have discussed tangible references in this thread already about how the term evolved and I think we are beyond "suspect" and "probably" (see here).


I'm afraid all I see there is "Sie haben entweder eine Seite erreicht, die nicht angezeigt werden kann, oder die Anzeigebeschränkung für dieses Buch erreicht."

I'll keep looking.


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## Peterdg

Forero said:


> I'm afraid all I see there is "Sie haben entweder eine Seite erreicht, die nicht angezeigt werden kann, oder die Anzeigebeschränkung für dieses Buch erreicht."
> 
> I'll keep looking.


The same message for me, but in Dutch.


----------



## berndf

Which pages they show you depends on the country of your IP address.  The bibliographic reference is here.

 In a nut shell, _present perfect _means that the action is complete in the present, _past perfect _because the action complete in the past and _future perfect _because the action is complete in the future.


----------



## Forero

berndf said:


> Which pages they show you depends on the country of your IP address.  The bibliographic reference is here.
> 
> In a nut shell, _present perfect _means that the action is complete in the present, _past perfect _because the action complete in the past and _future perfect _because the action is complete in the future.


Thank you.

I still suspect that the Present Perfect in English has never implied that the action is complete in the present, in spite of claims to that effect. In my experience, replacing an English Past Simple with a Present Perfect, or vice versa, has no effect on whether a sentence says an action is presently completed.

True, "I have finished" implies a completed action, as does "I did finish", but that meaning comes from the verb _finish_ (= "to complete a task"), not from the form of the verb chosen. "I have studied" certainly does not imply a completed action.

My current theory, unless and until someone comes up with a counterexample, is that Present Perfect deals with a time interval up to, but not beyond, the present. The action or state indicated by the "main" verb happened at least once in that time interval. This does not mean the action or state has persisted up to the present. Nor does it mean the action or state did not persist up to the present just because the entire time interval looked at is in the past.

Present Perfect statements are just not about actions or states in the present, except for the state of "having" done or been whatever, which exists just because the actions or states in question are now, in the present, past.

But I still call Present Perfect a "present" tense because it concerns the present state of history and works with other present tenses, and does not work with past tenses, in situations where tenses have to match (e.g. "He is caught before he has run half a mile", not "He is caught before he ran half a mile."). This is why that sentence with "for as long as I can (present tense)" sounds weird with a past tense in the main clause.

And Present Perfect sounds weird within a time interval obviously disconnected from the present, e.g. "This time yesterday I have run half a mile."


----------



## berndf

Forero said:


> I still suspect that the Present Perfect in English has never implied that the action is complete in the present, in spite of claims to that effect.


You are confusing two questions here:
(1) Why was the present perfect called present perfect?
(2) Does the underlying reasoning appropriately describe the use of the present perfect in English?

That answer to (1), the original question of this thread, is only a matter of historical fact and not of interpretation. (2) is up for discussion.
In my experience, replacing an English Past Simple with a Present Perfect, or vice versa, has no effect on whether a sentence says an action is presently completed.



Forero said:


> This does not mean the action or state has persisted up to the present. Nor does it mean the action or state did not persist up to the present just because the entire time interval looked at is in the past.


Not _state or action_. The perfect aspect is defined as describing _the state caused by the completion of the action_.



Forero said:


> And Present Perfect sounds weird within a time interval obviously disconnected from the present, e.g. "This time yesterday I have run half a mile."


This is not a matter of tense but of aspect. Present perfect is wrong because the aspect of the predicate is perfective and the perfective and perfect aspects are incompatible. In Latin-centric 18th century grammar, we find only the perfect and imperfect aspects and it would be difficult to explain why this sentence requires simple past. But modern grammar theory offering the distinction between perfect and perfective aspects has no problems with this example. A use of the present perfect that is really tricky to explain is the combination with the progressive aspect:
_I have been living in London for ten years._
Good luck.


----------



## Chasint

Thanks everyone for a fascinating discussion stemming from my original question.



berndf said:


> ...
> Not _state or action_. The perfect aspect is defined as describing _the state caused by the completion of the action_...


The problem for me with this statement is that there is no single, stable, incontrovertible state that is _caused by the completion of an [arbitrary] action_  - certainly not a change in the state of one's mind1 as was claimed earlier #54. Talking about causality takes us into the realms of philosophy (and even chaos theory2). My question is about the grammar of tenses - surely tenses are about when the action happened, not the result.



berndf said:


> A use of the present perfect that is really tricky to explain is the combination with the progressive aspect:
> _I have been living in London for ten years._
> ...


1. Before I stumbled upon my simple 'formula', I would have been at a loss to describe this tense. Now, without looking at any grammar books, the formula immediately tells me that this is the _present/perfect/continuous. _Am I right?

2. This is exactly the sort of problem that needs to be solved in my opinion in order to throw light on the whole subject. If we can accurately describe the most difficult cases then the rest falls into place. If we cannot, then I feel instinctively that we don't understand any of it.

___________________________________________________________
Notes

1. If a tree falls in a forest and hits the ground, does the tree have a memory of what happened? What is one single state that you can guarantee is now true? Pick one and I will argue a context where it isn't true.

2.  I'm talking about the butterfly effect and the like. Let's not even start on quantum physics!


----------



## Einstein

Biffo said:


> 1. If a tree falls in a forest and hits the ground, does the tree have a memory of what happened? What is one single state that you can guarantee is now true? Pick one and I will argue a context where it isn't true.


As I said a while back, an action's relevance to the present is the same however we talk about it, or even if we don't talk about it at all. The point is not what is or isn't true but what we are saying about the action when we choose to use the Present Perfect. I notice that the Present Perfect is absent from your question, which perhaps should have been, "If we say that a tree has fallen in a forest and (has) hit the ground, are we saying that it has a memory of the event?"
I can guarantee that the tree is no longer standing. You may well find a context where we use the Present Perfect differently, but that's no surprise. The Present Perfect has various uses, which are related but not identical.
We can also say "The tree fell yesterday". It's the same tree in the same forest but our attention is now on the action itself. In using the past tense we are not denying that the tree is no longer standing, we are simply making a different point.


----------



## berndf

Biffo said:


> The problem for me with this statement is that there is no single, stable, incontrovertible state that is _caused by the completion of an [arbitrary] action_...
> ___________________________________________________________
> 1. If a tree falls in a forest and hits the ground, does the tree have a  memory of what happened? What is one single state that you can  guarantee is now true? Pick one and I will argue a context where it  isn't true.


You mix up here two entirely different things: What a proposition expresses and whether or not it is true. We are here talking about semantics, i.e. the meaning of meaning of words, expressions and grammatical constructs is concerned; what the speaker expresses with it. The meaning of a sentence exists independently of whether or not the proposition it expresses is true.

The perfect aspect expresses a particular state caused by a particular action. The following dialogue exemplifies prototypical use of the this aspect: "Can I offer you something to eat?" "No, thank you I have already eaten". You use the perfect aspect here to express that that you do not want to eat because you are not hungry and you are not hungry because you just ate. I.e. _I just ate _expresses (or emphasizes) the (recent) action of eating and _I have just eaten_ expresses (emphasizes) the present state that you are not hungry as a result of this past action.



Biffo said:


> My question is about the grammar of tenses - surely tenses are about when the action happened, not the result.


Perfect is an aspect not a tense. High school grammar books constantly confuse tense and aspect but they are completely different things. The verb form of present perfect belongs to different categories, the present tense and the perfect aspect.



Biffo said:


> Now, without looking at any grammar books, the formula immediately tells me that this is the _present/perfect/continuous. _Am I right?


Yes, that is clear. But the combination of the perfect and progressive (=continuous) aspects is difficult to reconcile with grammar theory. Not impossible, though; but awkward because it requires an ad hoc explanation.


----------



## Ёж!

Biffo said:


> If a tree falls in a forest and hits the ground, does the tree have a memory of what happened? What is one single state that you can guarantee is now true? Pick one and I will argue a context where it isn't true.


 As for the tree, we don't care for the tree. We care for our feelings and knowledge about the tree. One, but not 'single' in the meaning 'clear-cut', state is that we feel and describe the situation in terms of the tree which once fell.

What tenses/aspects/etc are talking about, we don't know before investigation.


----------



## Chasint

Einstein said:


> ... "If we say that a tree has fallen in a forest and (has) hit the ground, are we saying that it has a memory of the event?"
> I can guarantee that the tree is no longer standing...


No you can't guarantee that at all. My context is that it was a very valuable old tree and the foresters propped it up immediately afterwards. In any case this doesn't in the slightest help us to distinguish present perfect from e.g. Simple Past. In both cases the tree fell and was touching the ground at one point in time.

For me this is such an important point that I'll repeat. 

1. Your assertion about the state of the tree after falling is not unique to the Present Perfect. It applies to Simple Past as well and so doesn't help at all with the naming of tenses.
2. You assertion is unfounded because what happened in the past guarantees absolutely nothing about the state of affairs in the present.


----------



## Chasint

Ёж! said:


> As for the tree, we don't care for the tree. We care for our feelings and knowledge about the tree. One, but not 'single' in the meaning 'clear-cut', state is that we feel and describe the situation in terms of the tree which once fell.
> 
> What tenses/aspects/etc are talking about, we don't know before investigation.


A computer (or a million monkeys on typewriters)  can produce the sentence "The tree has fallen". In theory, this sentence could be printed on paper and stored without ever being read by anyone. I maintain that this statement is still a statement and has all the qualities of a statement including the tense/aspect or whatever you care to describe. No-one feels anything about it at all and there is no tree. There is simply a sequence of words that the computer has been programmed to arrange in a 'grammatically correct' order.

For me all this talk about states and feelings is quite irrelevant.  I'm looking for a harder-nosed explanation.


----------



## Chasint

berndf said:


> You mix up here two entirely different things: What a proposition expresses and whether or not it is true. We are here talking about semantics, i.e. the meaning of meaning of words, expressions and grammatical constructs is concerned; what the speaker expresses with it. The meaning of a sentence exists independently of whether or not the proposition it expresses is true.
> 
> ...


Far from it. You are reinforcing my point. Syntax isn't semantics. Syntax is syntax. The only semantic level I am happy to allow is one that is independent of the verbs used. Let me make this clear by removing normal 'meaning' from the equation.

*Example*

For the purposes of this discussion I hereby define 'to bongulate' to be a completely made up and meaningless regular verb. I also define xonort to be a meaningless noun. I can now say:

_John has bongulated the xonort. _

The above sentence means nothing, yet I have correctly used the verb in the Present Perfect. What can we say about the current state of the xonort or of my mind or of anything else? I maintain that state is completely irrelevant to the discussion and a different tack is required.


----------



## Ёж!

Biffo said:


> A computer (or a million monkeys on typewriters)  can produce the sentence "The tree has fallen". In theory, this sentence could be printed on paper and stored without ever being read by anyone.


 In this case, it has no sense. Why some words typed on a paper sheet are any different than a rock in the sea or the flames in the Sun?


> For me all this talk about states and feelings is quite irrelevant.  I'm looking for a harder-nosed explanation.


There is none. There can't be any.


----------



## Einstein

Biffo said:


> No you can't guarantee that at all. My context is that it was a very valuable old tree and the foresters propped it up immediately afterwards. In any case this doesn't in the slightest help us to distinguish present perfect from e.g. Simple Past. In both cases the tree fell and was touching the ground at one point in time.
> 
> Another context: This was God's favourite tree. God performed a miracle and restored the tree to its previous state.


Perhaps "guarantee" was the wrong word (I was led by you into using it). The point, however, is that my use of the present perfect corresponds to what I believe to be true; more than that you can't demand. If I say "The king is dead" and he turns out to be alive, my error is factual, not linguistic. If you tell me that the tree has fallen, you are excluding subsequent intervention by God or the foresters. If you want to tell the whole truth you say, "The tree fell, but now the foresters have propped it up again". 
To take a more banal example, if I say "Someone has stolen my wallet" it means my wallet is missing. It may be that the thief has since repented and slipped it back into my pocket, but the verb form I use corresponds to the truth as far as I know it.



Biffo said:


> 1. Your assertion about the state of the tree is not unique to the Present Perfect, it applies to Simple Past as well and so doesn't help at all with the naming of tenses.
> 2. You assertion is unfounded because what happened in the past guarantees absolutely nothing about the state of affairs in the present.


Once again you are confusing the facts themselves with the way we describe them. We are talking about what we believe or deduce to be true and what point we want to make about it.
If I say, "John has gone to New York", I mean that he is there now. I mean that because it's what I believe to be true. All kinds of things may have happened since he left, so that, unbeknown to me, he is now somewhere else, but that is a question of fact, not of grammar.
I'm still waiting for you to say why you yourself choose the Present Perfect in some cases and the Past Simple in others. If you tell us, simply, that you say what sounds right to you as a native speaker, that is a good argument for abandoning all discussion of verb forms, not particularly for abandoning the label Present Perfect. I personally use the term Present Perfect because I find it a reasonable description, but if you can give us a better explanation as to why we use one rather than the other and on that basis propose a new label I'll be happy to adopt it.


----------



## Ёж!

Biffo said:


> Far from it. You are reinforcing my point. Syntax isn't semantics. Syntax is syntax. The only semantic level I am happy to allow is one that is independent of the verbs used. Let me make this clear by removing normal 'meaning' from the equation.


 One important feature of grammar in natural languages is that it does carry meanings. For example, the word 'house' has a different meaning than 'houses', and some languages might prefer to use plain words, not grammar, to express this difference. The same with verbs.



Biffo said:


> *Example*
> 
> For the purposes of this discussion I hereby define 'to bongulate' to be a completely made up and meaningless regular verb. I also define xonort to be a meaningless noun. I can now say:
> 
> _John has bongulated the xonort. _
> 
> The above sentence means nothing, yet I have correctly used the verb in the Present Perfect. What can we say about the current state of the xonort or of my mind or of anything else? I maintain that state is completely irrelevant to the discussion and a different tack is required.


    To me, it has meaning, even if little. I know or am led to think that the 'present' (whatever the word 'present' means) state of affairs is in part defined by the fact that John did bongulate the xonort. In fact, the sentence 'Mary has broken the piano' means no more, because we know nothing about Mary and the piano. (Well, I'll tell you: he, i.e. Mary, is a gangster from Liverpool, and he called his dustbin a piano; he broke this piano by constant whistling when he was around).


----------



## Chasint

Einstein said:


> Perhaps "guarantee" was the wrong word (I was led by you into using it). The point, however, is that my use of the present perfect corresponds to what I believe to be true; more than that you can't demand. If I say "The king is dead" and he turns out to be alive, my error is factual, not linguistic. If you tell me that the tree has fallen, you are excluding subsequent intervention by God or the foresters. If you want to tell the whole truth you say, "The tree fell, but now the foresters have propped it up again".
> To take a more banal example, if I say "Someone has stolen my wallet" it means my wallet is missing. It may be that the thief has since repented and slipped it back into my pocket, but the verb form I use corresponds to the truth as far as I know it...


There are many strands to this argument. I'll deal with this one first. By the way I haven't overlooked your request to say why I personally choose the present perfect, I'm seeing what others say in order to clarify my thoughts. Eventually I shall do my best to answer.

My current position is that there is no satisfactory answer (on this thread)  because there is no agreement on the logical level at which we are carrying out the discussion. I have provided one (perhaps the most basic) logical level, namely to examine the verbs that make up a complex tense and simply list them in order. This method requires nothing but (a) list of verbs and their conjugations and (b) a simple description of how auxiliary verbs relate to the main verbs. The analysis could be done by someone who understands no English.

At the other end is a full blown discourse on status, causality, semantics, context and more. I am looking for a statement that describes what a tense means independent of our state of mind or the truth value of the statement. 

I suppose I am really asking for the closest shave with Occam's razor short of beheading the customer.


----------



## Ёж!

Biffo said:


> I am looking for a statement that describes what a tense means independent of our state of mind [...]


If a sentence is not supposed to be understood, it's not a sentence.


----------



## berndf

Biffo said:


> There are many strands to this argument. I'll deal with this one first. By the way I haven't overlooked your request to say why I personally choose the present perfect, I'm seeing what others say in order to clarify my thoughts. Eventually I shall do my best to answer.
> 
> My current position is that there is no satisfactory answer (on this thread)  because there is no agreement on the logical level at which we are carrying out the discussion. I have provided one (perhaps the most basic) logical level, namely to examine the verbs that make up a complex tense and simply list them in order. This method requires nothing but (a) list of verbs and their conjugations and (b) a simple description of how auxiliary verbs relate to the main verbs. The analysis could be done by someone who understands no English.
> 
> At the other end is a full blown discourse on status, causality, semantics, context and more. I am looking for a statement that describes what a tense means independent of our state of mind or the truth value of the statement.
> 
> I suppose I am really asking for the closest shave with Occam's razor short of beheading the customer.


I am sorry, but this doesn't compute. Syntactic rules in itself only decide on the well-formedness of an expression. Since both, _Someone stole my wallet _and _Someone has stolen my wallet_, are well-formed sentences, only the semantic the construct generates and pragmatics of the utterance in a given context decides about which of the two forms should be used to convey a certain message. Syntax in itself cannot decide that.

In English, these two sentences carry different meanings while in modern colloquial German, where exactly the same syntactical structures exist (_Jemand stahl meine Geldbörse _vs._ Jemand hat meine Geldbörse gestohlen_) the two sentences carry exactly the same meaning.


----------



## lucas-sp

Biffo said:


> For me all this talk about states and feelings is quite irrelevant.  I'm looking for a harder-nosed explanation.


That's the hardest-nosed explanation you'll ever find. In linguistics we have to begin by cutting all sentences off from reference to the real world. Whether a sentence is true or not is irrelevant - and that's a _very_ hard-line move. _After all, I can tell a lie with the present perfect (and with any other part of language) and still speak completely grammatically, and be understood "correctly" by my interlocutor._

That's why it doesn't matter whether a tree has actually fallen, or whether I even believe that a tree has actually fallen or not. When _I_ say "A tree has fallen" to _you_ I _express_, by means of the present perfect, that the past action of the tree's fall has continued relevance in the present.

I could be right. I could be wrong. I could know that the statement was wrong and told a lie. I could have thought that the statement was wrong and told a lie, but the statement was actually correct. But in all those cases, the present perfect _expresses_​ to you the idea of "continued relevance to the present."


----------



## Chasint

berndf said:


> I am sorry, but this doesn't compute. Syntactic rules in itself only decide on the well-formedness of an expression. Since both, _Someone stole my wallet _and _Someone has stolen my wallet_, are well-formed sentences, only the semantic the construct generates and pragmatics of the utterance in a given context decides about which of the two forms should be used to convey a certain message. Syntax in itself cannot decide that.
> 
> In English, these two sentences carry different meanings while in modern colloquial German, where exactly the same syntactical structures exist (_Jemand stahl meine Geldbörse _vs._ Jemand hat meine Geldbörse gestohlen_) the two sentences carry exactly the same meaning.


Introducing another language is a red herring in my opinion. We are talking about English and English has its own conventions.

Don't you agree that there are levels of semantics? If I say "John has walked", our knowledge of life and our experiences of walking tell us what John was up to. However I want to strip away that level of semantics and ask what it means to say "John has (X)ed" where X is an arbitrary verb. It seems to me that the answer should be consistent regardless of the meaning of X, otherwise the naming of a tense would be context dependent!

I'm also claiming that if a computer were to construct the sentence "John has (X)ed" and another computer analysed this and declared it to be Present Perfect, then the second computer should be considered correct even if there is no cognitive awareness from start to finish.

I'm hoping that there is some essence of Present Perfect that can be described simply in terms of time - after all, tense is about time isn't it?  (Or am I wrong?)

Now, by introducing time, I am aware that I have reintroduced a level of semantics but that is exactly the level that I think we should be focusing on. All this business about theoretical people telling lies about non-existent trees lying on the floor of a hypothetical forest is (or should be) irrelevant.

So, what is the essence of Past Perfect?


----------



## lucas-sp

Biffo said:


> I'm hoping that there is some essence of Present Perfect that can be described simply in terms of time - after all, tense is about time isn't it?  (Or am I wrong?)
> 
> Now, by introducing time, I am aware that I have reintroduced a level of semantics but that is exactly the level that I think we should be focusing on. All this business about theoretical people telling lies about non-existent trees lying on the floor of a hypothetical forest is (or should be) irrelevant.


Actually, you are wrong. The only tenses in English are past, present, and future. The perfect is an *aspect* within any of those tenses. From wikipedia, which is a good place to start for anyone interested in this topic (the pages on tense and aspect are quite good):





> *Aspect is a grammatical category that expresses how an action, event or state, denoted by a verb, relates to the flow of time. (here)*


Tense very broadly expresses when an action takes place (past, present, or future). But aspect tells us _how that action relates to time itself_: is that action done once, and then finished? does it continue in time? does it persist into a future time? is it habitual? is there a relationship between the time at which the action took place and some later time?

To *indicate* or *emphasize *a relationship of *relevance *(that is, to express relevance, whether or not that relevance actually exists) between *a prior event, action, or state and a later time* (the time of reference, the time at which reference to the past is being made), we speakers of English *use* the *perfect aspect*. That is the essence of the perfect aspect.

Actually, context can effect how we might want to characterize a verb's tense and aspect. In English, when we see a sentence like "I had invited John..." we could either describe it as pluperfect or past perfect. "I had invited John to my birthday party three days before I went to the cake shop" seems pluperfect (look how it can take that "three days before," which the present perfect couldn't ever take), but "Although I had invited John to my birthday party, it was three days later and he still hadn't responded" seems like a past tense, perfect aspect construction.


----------



## berndf

Biffo said:


> I'm hoping that there is some essence of Present Perfect that can be described simply in terms of time - after all, tense is about time isn't it?  (Or am I wrong?)


Yes, you are wrong. Tense is all about time but the issue here is *not* tense. The issue here is aspect. To repeat it yet again: Calling the present perfect a _tense _is plain wrong. The present perfect is a _verb form_ that combines a _tense _(present) and an _aspect_ (perfect).



Biffo said:


> All this business about theoretical people telling lies about non-existent trees lying on the floor of a hypothetical forest is (or should be) irrelevant.


Yes, the meaning of a sentence has nothing to do with the truth value of the proposition it expresses.



Biffo said:


> Don't you agree that there are levels of semantics? If I say "John has  walked", our knowledge of life and our experiences of walking tell us  what John was up to. However I want to strip away that level of  semantics and ask what it means to say "John has (X)ed" where X is an  arbitrary verb.


The sentence refers to a state prevailing in the reference time of the uttering caused by John's action of (X)ing. This is the most general meaning (=semantics) of the present perfect. The concrete meaning is of course dependent on the verb and on context.



Biffo said:


> It seems to me that the answer should be consistent  regardless of the meaning of X...


And so it is... As with all grammatical terms, on a certain level of abstraction.



Biffo said:


> So, what is the essence of Past Perfect?


Essence of the present perfect _has _*.**.**.**.**.**.*_(X)ed_: The expression refers to a state prevailing in *.**.**.**.*the reference time of the uttering caused by an action of _(X)ing_.
Essence of the past*.**.**.**.*perfect _had_*.**.**.**.**.**.*_ (X)ed_: The expression refers to a state prevailing before the reference time of the uttering caused by an action of _(X)ing_.
Essence of the future*.**.*perfect _will have (X)ed_: The expression refers to a state prevailing after*.**.*the reference time of the uttering caused by an action of _(X)ing_.


----------



## Forero

berndf said:


> Yes, you are wrong. Tense is all about time but the issue here is *not* tense. The issue here is aspect. To repeat it yet again: Calling the present perfect a _tense _is plain wrong. The present perfect is a _verb form_ that combines a _tense _(present) and an _aspect_ (perfect).
> 
> Yes, the meaning of a sentence has nothing to do with the truth value of the proposition it expresses.
> 
> The sentence refers to a state prevailing in the reference time of the uttering caused by John's action of (X)ing. This is the most general meaning (=semantics) of the present perfect. The concrete meaning is of course dependent on the verb and on context.
> 
> And so it is... As with all grammatical terms, on a certain level of abstraction.
> 
> 
> Essence of the present perfect _has _*.**.**.**.**.**.*_(X)ed_: The expression refers to a state prevailing in *.**.**.**.*the reference time of the uttering caused by an action of _(X)ing_.
> Essence of the past*.**.**.**.*perfect _had_*.**.**.**.**.**.*_ (X)ed_: The expression refers to a state prevailing before the reference time of the uttering caused by an action of _(X)ing_.
> Essence of the future*.**.*perfect _will have (X)ed_: The expression refers to a state prevailing after*.**.*the reference time of the uttering caused by an action of _(X)ing_.


I agree we need to distinguish tense from aspect, but both have something to do with time, aspect rather more so than tense. For example--

Present tense can be used for future time, present time, or past time ("historical" present):

_... so yesterday he gets caught before he has run half a mile._ [Past time, present tense]

and past tense can too, if in subjunctive mood or subordinate to subjunctive mood:

_If he were to show up in New York tomorrow, and if I were to go there just because he was there, then ...._ [Future time, past tense]

But perfect aspect is practically always about time up to a certain point or points, and the only completeness inherent in perfect aspect is the end/completion of a time interval.


----------



## Chasint

Forero said:


> I agree we need to distinguish tense from aspect, but both have something to do with time, aspect rather more so than tense. For example--
> 
> Present tense can be used for future time, present time, or past time ("historical" present):
> 
> _... so yesterday he gets caught before he has run half a mile._ [Past time, present tense]
> 
> and past tense can too, if in subjunctive mood or subordinate to subjunctive mood:
> 
> _If he were to show up in New York tomorrow, and if I were to go there just because he was there, then ...._ [Future time, past tense]
> 
> But perfect aspect is practically always about time up to a certain point or points, and the only completeness inherent in perfect aspect is the end/completion of a time interval.


I'm just checking I understand.

Suppose someone says _"I have always lived in England and I always will until my dying day."_, what do you consider to be the end of the time interval? 

What about. _"I have visited Europe many times"_, what is the end of the time period in that case?

Thanks.

EDITED to add another example.


----------



## Einstein

Biffo said:


> I'm just checking I understand.
> Suppose someone says _"I have always lived in England and I always will until my dying day."_, what do you consider to be the end of the time interval?
> What about. _"I have visited Europe many times"_, what is the end of the time period in that case?


_"I have always lived in England and I always will until my dying day." _Here we have two verb forms, each with its own time interval._
"I have always lived in England..." _Time interval from birth to the present._
"...and I always will until my dying day". _Time interval from the present till death.
_
"I have visited Europe many times". _Time interval up to the present. Perhaps it's misleading to talk about the "end" of the time period. _"I have visited Europe many times but now I want to see the rest of the world" _implies a period that stops now, but by itself  the sentence_ "I have visited Europe many times" _may imply a continuing period in which the speaker will have further opportunities to visit Europe. On the other hand, _"I *visited *Europe many times" _implies that the speaker's European travels were already over before the time of the conversation.


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## berndf

Forero said:


> Present tense can be used for future time, present time, or past time ("historical" present):


Please note that I said "reference time of the uttering". This does not need to be the time of the uttering itself:


Forero said:


> _... so yesterday he gets caught before he has run half a mile._ [Past time, present tense]


_Tom enters _[reference time]_ the old tavern and sees a man sweeping the floor. He notices that it is the same man he saw _[before reference time]_ yesterday and will probably see _[after reference time] _again tomorrow._


Forero said:


> and past tense can too, if in subjunctive mood or subordinate to subjunctive mood:


The forms of the subjunctive do not express tense despite there naming.


Forero said:


> But perfect aspect is practically always about time up to a certain point or points, and the only completeness inherent in perfect aspect is the end/completion of a time interval.


It is always about a state of completion _at a time_. The time itself is expressed by _tense_.

In verb forms that do not have a morphological tense, the periphrastic form expresses both, tense and aspect, which one (or both) depends on context. This is applies to the subjunctive:
_If he did it... _[tense=present; aspect=unspecified; mood=hypothetical irrealis]
_If he had done it..._ [tense=past; aspect=unspecified; mood=hypothetical irrealis]

And to the infinitive:
_He hopes to win the lottery_. [present or future]
_He hopes to have won the lottery. _[tense=past; aspect=unspecified]
_He imagines how it would be to have won in the lottery. _[tense=unspecified; aspect=perfect]


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## Ёж!

berndf said:


> It is always about a state of completion _at a time_. The time itself is expressed by _tense_.


He has been in Europe for three weeks already.
He had seen many things in his life.
He had watched this movie before.

This is not completion in the commonest sense of the word, this is something else.


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## berndf

Ёж! said:


> He has been in Europe for three weeks already.
> He had seen many things in his life.
> He had watched this movie before.
> 
> This is not completion in the commonest sense of the word, this is something else.


The 2nd and 3rd sentences don't produce a problem for traditional grammar theory: They do not describe the past actions of seeing things or watching a movie but the past states of _being familiar_ with them as a result of having seen/watched them.

As I said before, it is the first sentence that poses some difficulties, especially if you add the continuous aspect (_He has been staying in Europe for three weeks_).


----------



## Ёж!

Yes, it's only the word use that I was arguing against in that post. My objection against the word use is summarised by Forero's words: _the only completeness inherent in perfect aspect is the end/completion of a time interval_. Which is not enough; explanations involving the word 'state' are much more plain and convincing than explanations involving the word 'completion'.


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## berndf

Ёж! said:


> Yes, it's only the word use that I was arguing against in that post. My objection against the word use is summarised by Forero's words: _the only completeness inherent in perfect aspect is the end/completion of a time interval_. Which is not enough; explanations involving the word 'state' are much more plain and convincing than explanations involving the word 'completion'.


Then we are in agreement.


----------



## Forero

Einstein said:


> _"I have always lived in England and I always will until my dying day." _Here we have two verb forms, each with its own time interval._
> "I have always lived in England..." _Time interval from birth to the present._
> "...and I always will until my dying day". _Time interval from the present till death.


That is what I mean. The time interval ends at the reference time. The Perfect is about time up until the reference time.





> _"I have visited Europe many times". _Time interval up to the present. Perhaps it's misleading to talk about the "end" of the time period. _"I have visited Europe many times but now I want to see the rest of the world" _implies a period that stops now, but by itself  the sentence_ "I have visited Europe many times" _may imply a continuing period in which the speaker will have further opportunities to visit Europe. On the other hand, _"I *visited *Europe many times" _implies that the speaker's European travels were already over before the time of the conversation.


I disagree with this last remark. To me, _implies_ means "logically eliminates all other choices", and, as I see it, both "I visited Europe many times" and "I have visited Europe many times" can be referring to all the same visits, and neither says anything about continuing opportunities.

The past simple has a reference time in the past and says visiting happened then; the present perfect has a reference time in the present and says visiting (has) happened before. Neither says whether visiting is complete or continuing.

But the two are not the same because the reference times are different, as can be seen by trying out different time adverbials such as "right now" (weird-sounding with past tense, any aspect), "back then"/ "last week" / "a second ago"  (weird-sounding with present tense, any aspect), "before" (fine with either past simple or present perfect).

Anything with "ago" puts a gap (size does not matter) between the reference time and "now", but "before" (the adverb, not the preposition or conjunction) does not interpose a gap.

The gap that prompts past tense limits the time interval being talked about, but it does not say anything about visiting that may have occurred, or may yet occur, after that interval. Similarly, Present Perfect is about a time interval that extends without a gap up to "the present" (its reference time), but it does not imply that the visiting extends up to the present, that it went on without a gap, that opportunities still exist, or that they don't.

I hope this makes sense.


----------



## Forero

berndf said:


> [...]
> The forms of the subjunctive do not express tense despite there naming.
> It is always about a state of completion _at a time_. The time itself is expressed by _tense_.
> [...]


It seems we differ in our use of essential terminology.

In my background, _mood_, _tense_ and _aspect_ are inflectional categories of English verbs. Sometimes forms do not reflect changes in one or the other category, but the categories are still there. For example the form _put_ is both a present tense form and a past tense form, both an indicative form and a subjunctive form, and a past participle form to boot. Yet these categories do not become meaningless just because some of their forms merge for certain verbs.

And in my background _time_ is a dimension, something like a line on which events occur and states exist and change in a particular order.

What I have been trying to say is that, although the inflectional categories may be orthogonal, they do not in my experience have orthogonal meanings. Both tense and aspect tell us something about where on the line of time the actions and states lie that are expressed by our verbs. English Perfect aspect is about an interval on the line of time that extends up to a place of reference on the line of time, a place of reference somehow connected to tense and context, and actions ocurring and states existing or changing within that interval. It is not about whether actions or states end within that interval or beyond it.

Looking at things another way, the Perfect aspect expresses what may be called a "state" that begins in or at the time interval in question and extends indefinitely into the future. (Past tense seems to express this too, in a less direct way.)  An action such as a chap's getting caught may end, but his having got caught does not. Thus "having got caught" is a permanent state.

However, no other state is expressed or implied by the use of the Perfect aspect. When we say "He has been caught", we are not saying he will remain caught forever. Although the state of "having been caught" cannot change, the state of "being caught" can.

And Perfect aspect does not imply that either "being caught" or "having been caught" causes any other state.

Does this make sense? Do others agree?


----------



## berndf

Forero said:


> Looking at things another way, the Perfect aspect expresses what may be called a "state" that begins in or at the time interval in question and extends indefinitely into the future. (Past tense seems to express this too, in a less direct way.)  An action such as a chap's getting caught may end, but his having got caught does not. Thus "having got caught" is a permanent state.
> 
> However, no other state is expressed or implied by the use of the Perfect aspect. When we say "He has been caught", we are not saying he will remain caught forever. Although the state of "having been caught" cannot change, the state of "being caught" can.


I don't understand what "other" state you'd be looking for. "He _has _been caught" means that he _is_ in custody, the state produced by the action of catching, "He _had_ been caught" means that he _was _in custody and "He_ will have _been caught" means that he _will be_ in custody.



Forero said:


> It is not about whether actions or states end within that interval or beyond it.


Not ended but completed. As Ёж! correctly pointed out in #112 the grammatical category of completeness refers to the existence of a state in relation to the action and not to the action itself or its point of termination.

I find it useful to analyse the meanings of grammatical categories from a point of view of formal logic. In the most general term, the meaning of a synthetic statement can be defined as the set of possible states of the world the statement is not compatible with. Let's assume that a criminal was apprehended yesterday morning and still was in custody yesterday evening still is in custody now. Then we have the following truth values (I am ignoring the difference between _catches _and _is catching_ for simplicity assuming the two forms were interchangeable):
_Police catches the criminal_ - false (the action occurred in the past).
_Police caught the criminal_ - true (the action occurred in the past).
_Police has caught the criminal_ - true (the state of being in custody still exists).
_Police had caught the criminal_ - true (the state of being in custody existed at a past point in time; you would typically use this form in relation to other states or events prevailing/exiting at a point in time like yesterday evening).

If on the other hand the criminal managed to escape yesterday evening, the truth tables would be as follows:
_Police catches the criminal_ - false (the action occurred in the past).
_Police caught the criminal_ - true (the action occurred in the past).
_Police has caught the criminal_ - false (the state of being in custody does not exist any more).
_Police had caught the criminal_  - true (the state of being in custody existed at a past point in time).
_________
Note: I converted the the sentence into an active form because the English passive has, owing to the perfect semantics of the participle, two different interpretations: a perfective one, _he is caught _referring to the action of catching [_He is caught every time he tries to escape_], and a perfect one, _he is caught _referring to the state of being in custody [_He is caught between two floodgates_].


----------



## Chasint

berndf said:


> ...
> I find it useful to analyse the meanings of grammatical categories from a point of view of formal logic. In the most general term, the meaning of a synthetic statement can be defined as the set of possible states of the world the statement is not compatible with. Let's assume that a criminal was apprehended yesterday morning and still was in custody yesterday evening still is in custody now. Then we have the following truth values (I am ignoring the difference between _catches _and _is catching_ for simplicity assuming the two forms were interchangeable):
> _Police catches the criminal_ - false (the action occurred in the past).
> _Police caught the criminal_ - true (the action occurred in the past).
> _Police has caught the criminal_ - true (the state of being in custody still exists).
> _Police had caught the criminal_ - true (the state of being in custody existed at a past point in time; you would typically use this form in relation to other states or events prevailing/exiting at a point in time like yesterday evening).
> 
> If on the other hand the criminal managed to escape yesterday evening, the truth tables would be as follows:
> _Police catches the criminal_ - false (the action occurred in the past).
> _Police caught the criminal_ - true (the action occurred in the past).
> _Police has caught the criminal_ - false (the state of being in custody does not exist any more).
> _Police had caught the criminal_  - true (the state of being in custody existed at a past point in time).
> _________
> Note: I converted the the sentence into an active form because the English passive has, owing to the perfect semantics of the participle, two different interpretations: a perfective one, _he is caught _referring to the action of catching [_He is caught every time he tries to escape_], and a perfect one, _he is caught _referring to the state of being in custody [_He is caught between two floodgates_].


_Police has caught the criminal_ - *true* (the state of being in custody still exists).
_Police has caught the criminal_ - *false* (the state of being in custody does not exist any more).

The fact that the Present Perfect can allow both a true and a false value surely shows that the both state and  truth value are irrelevant when discussing this verb form.


----------



## francisgranada

Biffo said:


> _Police has caught the criminal_ - *true* (the state of being in custody still exists).
> _Police has caught the criminal_ - *false* (the state of being in custody does not exist any more).
> 
> The fact that the Present Perfect can allow both a true and a false value surely shows that the both state and  truth value are irrelevant when discussing this verb form.



I think this is the consequence of a further evolution of the language, or the grammaticalization of the construction "to have + past participle" resulting in what we call now "present perfect". 

The original (etymological/historical) meaning of a sentence like _Police has (the) caught criminal_ could be something like "the police has ('owns') the caught criminal (i.e. a criminal thas was caught)". Thus "historically" this sentence was allways "*true*".                                                

In my opinion, the present perfect in English today has (may have) also a temporal character, expressing some kind of a "near past", that's why also "*false*" can be valid. From this point of view the name "present perfect" reflects better the original (historical, if so) sense of this verbal construction and does not necessarily cover all it's functions.


----------



## berndf

Biffo said:


> _Police has caught the criminal_ - *true* (the state of being in custody still exists).
> _Police has caught the criminal_ - *false* (the state of being in custody does not exist any more).
> 
> The fact that the Present Perfect can allow both a true and a false value surely shows that the both state and  truth value are irrelevant when discussing this verb form.


I beg your pardon? How can the truth value of a propositional sentence not be relevant for its meaning?

A synthetic statement that can only me true or only be false is meaningless.


----------



## Chasint

berndf said:


> I beg your pardon? How can the truth value of a propositional sentence not be relevant for its meaning?
> 
> A synthetic statement that can only me true or only be false is meaningless.


I didn't say that or anything like it. My point was that If you say "Police has caught the criminal" (which isn't really possible in English but never mind)  and it can be true or false according to whether the criminal was released (your scenarion), then what relevance does the truth value have when describing the verb form (i.e. the Present Perfect). 

Example
_I'm thinking of an animal. Either it has four legs or it doesn't have four legs. Name the animal. _Of what use is the mention of legs in the the description? None.

Similarly the truth value of a statement that can equally be true or false can have no place in the naming of a verb form, otherwise you would have to have Past Perfect (T) and Past Perfect (F). There may be such a language in the world somewhere but we're discussing English which doesn't make the distinction. If you don't know what state appertains after using the verb form then the state doesn't have relevance either. It's not a quality of the verb form, it's a quality of the context.


----------



## berndf

Biffo said:


> Similarly the truth value of a statement that can equally *either *[that's what I claimed]be true or false can have no place in the naming of a verb form, otherwise you would have to have Past Perfect (T) and Past Perfect (F). There may be such a language in the world somewhere but we're discussing English which doesn't make the distinction. If you don't know what state appertains after using the verb form then the state doesn't have relevance either. It's not a quality of the verb form, it's a quality of the context.


Of course you know. That is the point. Let's take a simple proposition. _The ball is red._ This statement can be either true of false depending on whether the ball is indeed red or not. The colour of the ball is therefore relevant to the meaning of the sentence. 

Equally, if the fact that a state still exists or not is relevant for the truth value of the sentence then it is surely relevant to its meaning.
______________________________________
You wrote "'Police has caught the criminal' (which isn't really possible in English but never mind)...". Usage sample: Herts Police has caught thousands of serious criminals...


----------



## Ёж!

berndf said:


> I find it useful to analyse the meanings of grammatical categories from a point of view of formal logic.


There is a thing to say about statements (propositional sentences), namely that they don't have to be true or false. Remember the liar's paradox, for example.


----------



## Forero

berndf said:


> Forero said:
> 
> 
> 
> Looking at things another way, the Perfect aspect expresses what may be called a "state" that begins in or at the time interval in question and extends indefinitely into the future. (Past tense seems to express this too, in a less direct way.)  An action such as a chap's getting caught may end, but his having got caught does not. Thus "having got caught" is a permanent state.
> 
> However, no other state is expressed or implied by the use of the Perfect aspect. When we say "He has been caught", we are not saying he will remain caught forever. Although the state of "having been caught" cannot change, the state of "being caught" can.
> 
> 
> 
> I don't understand what "other" state you'd be looking for. "He _has _been caught" means that he _is_ in custody, the state produced by the action of catching,
Click to expand...

Not in the English language I use and am familiar with.

This is the first mention of custody in this thread. The meaning of _catch_ depends on context. But let us now assume that _catch_ here does mean "take into custody", and let us assume, though the statement itself does not imply this, that "he" is a criminal and that "caught" means by the police.

Still "He has been caught" only means he has been caught. It does not say whether he is still in custody. Perhaps he has been caught, tried, acquitted, and released, perhaps multiple times. Or maybe he has been caught and killed and his body tossed into the sea.

Under the assumptions I have mentioned, we can infer from "He has been caught" that police have taken him into custody and that he has been in police custody. But "The police have taken him into custody" does not say that he is now in custody and "He has been in police custody" does not say he is now in police custody.

If we now assume that he managed to escape yesterday evening, so that he is no longer in police custody, "Police have caught the criminal" and "He has been in police custody" remain true. If something did happen, it has happened.

Similarly, "I opened the door" implies "I have opened the door", but "I have opened the door" does not imply "I have the door open."

And "She went" implies "She has gone", but "She has gone" does not imply "She is gone." Once "She has gone" becomes true, it stays true whether or not she stays "gone".


> Forero said:
> 
> 
> 
> It is not about whether actions or states end within that interval or beyond it.
> 
> 
> 
> Not ended but completed. As ??! correctly pointed out in #112 the grammatical category of completeness refers to the existence of a state in relation to the action and not to the action itself or its point of termination.
Click to expand...

I don't know what this might mean.





> I find it useful to analyse the meanings of grammatical categories from a point of view of formal logic. In the most general term, the meaning of a synthetic statement can be defined as the set of possible states of the world the statement is not compatible with. Let's assume that a criminal was apprehended yesterday morning and still was in custody yesterday evening still is in custody now. Then we have the following truth values (I am ignoring the difference between _catches _and _is catching_ for simplicity assuming the two forms were interchangeable):
> _Police catches the criminal_ - false (the action occurred in the past).
> _Police caught the criminal_ - true (the action occurred in the past).
> _Police has caught the criminal_ - true (the state of being in custody still exists).
> _Police had caught the criminal_ - true (the state of being in custody existed at a past point in time; you would typically use this form in relation to other states or events prevailing/exiting at a point in time like yesterday evening).
> 
> If on the other hand the criminal managed to escape yesterday evening, the truth tables would be as follows:
> _Police catches the criminal_ - false (the action occurred in the past).
> _Police caught the criminal_ - true (the action occurred in the past).
> _Police has caught the criminal_ - false (the state of being in custody does not exist any more).
> _Police had caught the criminal_  - true (the state of being in custody existed at a past point in time).
> _________
> Note: I converted the the sentence into an active form because the English passive has, owing to the perfect semantics of the participle, two different interpretations: a perfective one, _he is caught _referring to the action of catching [_He is caught every time he tries to escape_], and a perfect one, _he is caught _referring to the state of being in custody [_He is caught between two floodgates_].


I agree that clear formal logic is of the utmost importance here.

I can see that the truth values you assign to these sentences do not match the ones I would assign.

And I agree that things like passive voice, progressive aspect, and subjunctive mood only cloud the issue. And so do Present Simple and Past Perfect, because of inherent ambiguity.

As I see it, we mean to be discussing two things:

(1) What is the difference in meaning, if any, between Present Perfect and Past (Simple) in current English?
and (2) Has this meaning difference changed since the time the term "Present Perfect" was first applied to _have_+p.p.?

I suspect the answer to (2) is "No", and that those who first applied the term "Present Perfect" to the English structure were off the mark as to the meaning in English, and maybe even off the mark as to the meaning of the Perfect aspect in Latin. If they were, the original "Why?" question that started this thread becomes a question about psychology or motive: Why did they make the claims they did?

On the other hand, if the answer to (2) is "Yes", we have at least a start at answering the original "Why?" question.


----------



## Ёж!

Forero said:


> berndf said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> "He has been caught" means that he is in custody, the state produced by the action of catching,
> 
> 
> 
> Not in the English language I use and am familiar with.
> 
> This is the first mention of custody in this thread. The meaning of _catch_ depends on context. But let us now assume that _catch_ here does mean "take into custody", and let us assume, though the statement itself does not imply this, that "he" is a criminal and that "caught" means by the police.
> 
> Still "He has been caught" only means he has been caught. It does not say whether he is still in custody. Perhaps he has been caught, tried, acquitted, and released, perhaps multiple times. Or maybe he has been caught and killed and his body tossed into the sea.
Click to expand...

  I think it'd be more correct to say that some things or some people (maybe he, maybe the speaker, maybe both) are now not in _the_ state, but in _a_ state produced by somebody's action of catching him. What is this state we don't know, but we know the catching happened before and is somehow important, or at least in some good way relevant to this state.


----------



## Forero

Ёж! said:


> I think it'd be more correct to say that he is know not in _the_ state, but in _a_ state produced by somebody's action of catching him. What is this state we don't know, but we know the catching happened before and is somehow important, or at least in some good way relevant to this state.


It is more correct because it is less categorical. But it is also less meaningful.

What do "relevant" and "important" and "state" mean? I need either to see an example or to see these terms used in a context that defines them.

If I as a native English speaker can't find meaning in this terminology, how is a non-native English learner supposed to make sense of it?

I have heard people use these terms before, but unfortunately the examples these people have provided just do not say to me what these people say they mean.

Biffo's posts tell me I am not alone in my concern.


----------



## Hulalessar

Forero said:


> I agree that clear formal logic is of the utmost importance here.



I am inclined to think that it only confuses things.

I think it comes down to what the speaker wants to get across.

_The police caught him_ is merely communicating the fact that there was an event which involved him being caught.  It may be that he is still in custody or awaiting trial, or that he was tried and convicted, or that he escaped. You are more likely to say _The police caught him_ if you are relating some event that is "history".

_The police have caught him _communicates not only that there was an event which involved him being caught, but also something else. This something else is not necessarily explicit; there is just an implication that there is some effect of his being caught which lingers in the present. It could be that he is still being held or that he is awaiting trial. You are more likely to say _The police have caught him_ if you are relating some event that is "not yet history" because its outcome is still undecided.


----------



## Hulalessar

When I was a lad, which is going back a bit now, there was no such thing as the present perfect. By that I of course mean that in the school I attended nothing was referred to as the present perfect. Even so, I am inclined to think that a good part of linguistics involves thinking up concepts and then finding examples of them. It can be a question of homing in on forms and then trying to find functions to fit the forms. To put it another way, to what extent can you have a function without a form?

I wish that linguistics when it decided to start all over again had chosen to use a completely new set of terms. Take the word "tense". Whilst looking at the etymology of a word is no guide to its meaning, in this case it is helpful. The word derives from the Old French _tens _and ultimately Latin _tempus_, both meaning time; indeed, in Modern French and Latin the same word is used for both "time" and "tense". I have a book entitled _L'art du conjuguer _(published in 1959) which says: "Il y a cinq temps destinés à indiquer les diverses sortes de passé" - the section following making no mention of aspect. Any notion of aspect was clearly thought of by the author as being subservient to time. The word "aspect" never came up in any English, French, Spanish or Latin lesson. It was only when I started to learn Russian that the word came up - and of course it had to because you cannot get to grips with Russian without understanding the notion of aspect as something distinct from time. Whilst I am not saying that a proper description of English, French,Spanish or Latin can be made without involving the notion of aspect, the fact is that you do not need to bring the concept in when teaching any one of those languages to a speaker of any other of them, but you do have to bring it in when teaching Russian to any such speaker. What is didactically useful must tell us something, even if it does not tell us everything.

In the absence of grammatical forms being allocated letters, numbers or the names of flowers or famous authors, we are stuck with descriptive names which tend to home in on form rather than function, with the name not entirely appropriate to all the functions. There is no language I know or have investigated where there is a one to one correspondence between form and function. There is not really any descriptive name that you can allocate to the form _present tense of "have" plus past participle _which will describe all the functions the form performs. Accordingly, arguing about whether the name given to it matches any given function it performs seems rather pointless.

I doubt whether any language can be fully described, but I suspect that, given an equal number of pages to describe them, some languages can more fully described than others. English resists pigeonholing more than Latin. I therefore hesitate to set out any rules about when the present perfect needs to be used. I think that the best that can be said is that when it is used the effect is to emphasise that the event described as having taken place (a) has some effect which is felt to be significant at the time of speaking or (b) having started is continuing.


----------



## Ёж!

Forero said:


> What do "relevant" and "important" and "state" mean? I need either to see an example or to see these terms used in a context that defines them.


Exactly. Who ever said learning a language is simply a matter of memorising some rules and definitions? The part that I was not at all categorical about was _when should we want to talk_ of the condition rather than only the action which is relevant to the condition, and _what ways of relevance should we want_ to recognise. The questions that deal with human wishes and choices are naturally hard to explain, given all complexity of human behaviour and mind; yet, the traditions of making choices and having wishes do make up a language. So, at some point, instead of providing explanations, language teachers would just show some examples and tell us to find some more examples in books or in conversation.


----------



## Chasint

berndf said:


> Of course you know. That is the point. Let's take a simple proposition. _The ball is red._ This statement can be either true of false depending on whether the ball is indeed red or not. The colour of the ball is therefore relevant to the meaning of the sentence.
> 
> Equally, if the fact that a state still exists or not is relevant for the truth value of the sentence then it is surely relevant to its meaning.
> ______________________________________
> You wrote "'Police has caught the criminal' (which isn't really possible in English but never mind)...". Usage sample: Herts Police has caught thousands of serious criminals...


Again you misunderstand my point. There are logical levels of meaning. Whether or not a ball happens to be red and whether or not someone tells lies about it is not relevant to a discussion of Past Perfect or any other tense or verb form.

What I am looking for is a general description that is independent of the surface meaning. What I want to know is 

"What distinguishes_ "The X is Y"_ from_ "The X was Y"_ and_ "The X has been Y."_ I don't care about balls (if you'll pardon the expression). My concern exists at a different logical level.

Let's forget about truth values (for they are truly irrelevant). Imagine, for the sake of argument, that I am a Truth Teller. I am incapable telling a lie.

If I say to you _"The X is Y.",_, you know nothing about the current state of X even though I was telling the absolute truth.  The instant I finish speaking the state of X may change.  Therefore, I argue, it is irrelevant to talk about state. Not even the state of the speaker and listener.

I repeat: Truth and state have zero relevance to the naming or meaning of a verb form.


----------



## Forero

Hulalessar said:


> I am inclined to think that it only confuses things.
> 
> I think it comes down to what the speaker wants to get across.
> 
> _The police caught him_ is merely communicating the fact that there was an event which involved him being caught.  It may be that he is still in custody or awaiting trial, or that he was tried and convicted, or that he escaped. You are more likely to say _The police caught him_ if you are relating some event that is "history".
> 
> _The police have caught him _communicates not only that there was an event which involved him being caught, but also something else. This something else is not necessarily explicit; there is just an implication that there is some effect of his being caught which lingers in the present. It could be that he is still being held or that he is awaiting trial. You are more likely to say _The police have caught him_ if you are relating some event that is "not yet history" because its outcome is still undecided.


Please be careful with the word _implication_. I hope you mean "suggestion".

This sounds backwards to me. I would say that "The police have caught him" says his being caught is history but "The police caught him" suggests there will be more to the story.

But notice that I say "suggests", not "implies". I think each of these sentences implies the other. If the police caught him, then the police have caught him; and if the police have caught him, then the police did at some time catch him.

However, there is a difference in meaning between these two sentences that depends on what time we have in mind. "Now the police have caught him" is to me a natural sentence, and "Five minutes ago the police caught him" is natural too. Both sentences can even be true at the same time about the same event. But "Five minutes ago the police have caught him" only seems natural to me in a context in which it means "Five minutes ago the police had caught him", which is not saying the same thing. "Ago" defines a gap in time, and "Five minutes ago the police caught him" puts the event in question right at the beginning of the gap. In contrast, "Five minutes ago the police had caught him" puts the event at an earlier time, more than five minutes ago.


----------



## Chasint

Hulalessar said:


> ...(1) I think it comes down to what the speaker wants to get across.
> _(2) The police caught him_ is merely communicating the fact that there was an event which involved him being caught...


I agree with the first statement but not the second. 

Statement 1 is interesting: Usually when someone speaks they want to communicate something.

Statement 2 is not reliable. It may not be a fact because he may be lying or mistaken.

I repeat - truth values are not and cannot be part of the discussion of tense and verb forms. They are orthogonal to it.

I'm not yet certain whether the speaker's intention is a vital factor. I suspect it may be.


----------



## Hulalessar

Perhaps the difference I am getting at can be shown by two different contexts.

A friend is round in the evening and you see an intruder in the back garden who runs off. You call the police. Your friend leaves.

Example 1: The next morning the police call and say that they have arrested the intruder. You call your friend. You say: _You know that intruder, well the police have caught him._ It is a recent event. It is still in the air.

Example 2: Six months later your friend calls again. He asks about the intruder. You say: _The police caught him._ It is now an old story.


----------



## Hulalessar

Biffo said:


> I'm not yet certain whether the speaker's intention is a vital factor. I suspect it may be.



Rather than "I think it comes down to what the speaker wants to get across", I ought perhaps to have said, "I think it comes down to what the context requires the speaker to say."


----------



## Chasint

Hulalessar said:


> Perhaps the difference I am getting at can be shown by two different contexts.
> 
> A friend is round in the evening and you see an intruder in the back garden who runs off. You call the police. Your friend leaves.
> 
> Example 1: The next morning the police call and say that they have arrested the intruder. You call your friend. You say: _You know that intruder, well the police have caught him._ It is a recent event. It is still in the air.
> 
> Example 2: Six months later your friend calls again. He asks about the intruder. You say: _The police caught him._ It is now an old story.


I think that is interesting. Let me see if I understand. Effectively you are saying we could reasonably rename Simple Past as the Historical Tense* and Present Perfect as the Updating Tense. Is that roughly it?

___________________________________________________________________________________
* Apologies if I have used the word 'tense' incorrectly here - I'm sure you know what I mean).


----------



## berndf

Forero said:


> I don't know what this might mean.


In this context_ completeness_ ("perfect") does not mean that the action has ended but that the caused state referenced by the sentence has been established; this can occur while the action is still ongoing. I agree with Ёж! that this terminological choice _complete/perfect _is perhaps a bit unfortunate.



Forero said:


> Not in the English language I use and am familiar with.
> 
> This is the first mention of custody in this thread. The meaning of _catch_ depends on context. But let us now assume that _catch_ here does mean "take into custody", and let us assume, though the statement itself does not imply this, that "he" is a criminal and that "caught" means by the police.
> 
> Still "He has been caught" only means he has been caught. It does not say whether he is still in custody. Perhaps he has been caught, tried, acquitted, and released, perhaps multiple times. Or maybe he has been caught and killed and his body tossed into the sea.


In the meaning of_ catch_ I was analysing (=_apprehend_) I maintain it does. I guess you mean contexts like_ The motorist has been caught speeding_. Here, _catch _does  not mean physical apprehension but means that this transgression has  become known/has been documented. This state obviously persists ad  perpetuum, even if the accusation eventually turns out to be false.

To avoid further philosophizing about the meaning of to catch which is not what we are concerned here with, let's take a simpler case with less potential for ambiguity: _It has stopped raining_. Would you contend that this  statement would also be appropriate, if it has started raining again afterwards?

I would like to clarify this point before replying to your other comments.


----------



## berndf

Biffo said:


> Again you misunderstand my point. There are logical levels of meaning. Whether or not a ball happens to be red and whether or not someone tells lies about it is not relevant to a discussion of Past Perfect or any other tense or verb form.
> 
> What I am looking for is a general description that is independent of the surface meaning. What I want to know is
> 
> "What distinguishes_ "The X is Y"_ from_ "The X was Y"_ and_ "The X has been Y."_ I don't care about balls (if you'll pardon the expression). My concern exists at a different logical level.
> 
> Let's forget about truth values (for they are truly irrelevant). Imagine, for the sake of argument, that I am a Truth Teller. I am incapable telling a lie.
> 
> If I say to you _"The X is Y.",_, you know nothing about the current state of X even though I was telling the absolute truth.  The instant I finish speaking the state of X may change.  Therefore, I argue, it is irrelevant to talk about state. Not even the state of the speaker and listener.
> 
> I repeat: Truth and state have zero relevance to the naming or meaning of a verb form.


Ok, it seems you didn't study logic at university. *N.B.:* This is not a criticism, not everybody can study everything and there are lots of subjects _I_ haven't studied but logic and epistemology are things I am pretty good at.

Let me try to introduce the concepts and terminology you are obviously not familiar with. I have to apologize  for using specialized terminology without properly introducing it. The term _truth value_ refers to statement containing variables and defines the truth/falsity of the statement in relation to the truth and falsity of its constituents. I.e. truth or falsity of such a statement is regarded as a function in mathematical function and in mathematics we talk about arguments and values of function and in analogy we talk about truth values to refer to the truth or falsity of a statement as a function of its argument. Talking about "synthetic" statement (i.e. statements that make actual assertions about the outside world), the elementary facts about this outside world are understood as variables and when we talk about the _truth value_ of such a proposition we speak of the truth or falsity of a statement in relation to the contingent truth of falsity of these elementary fact (_contingent _means that the truth of falsity of a statement cannot be derived out of logical necessity but depends on the actual state of the world, i.e. the statement can be either true or false). Let's take a simple example:_ If I have a cat then I hate dogs_. The _table of truth values _(or short: _truth table_) of this statement is as follows:

_I have a cat_ | _I hate dogs_ | _If I have a cat then I hate dogs_
-------------+-------------+---------------------------------
false........| false.......| true
false........| true........| true
true.........| false.......| false
true.........| true........| true

Analysing this truth table helps us to determine about what the statements makes assertions and about what the statement doesn't. From looking at it we learn that the statement makes no assertions whatsoever about a world in which I don't have a cat because as long as _I have a cat_ is false _If I have a cat then I hate dogs_ is always true regardless what other facts prevail.

Now, if we want to explore the_ meaning_ of a synthetic statement, we have to search for facts about the world that alter the truth value of the statement, i.e. facts that would make the statement false. And that's what I did (searching for such facts) in my post you so vehemently attacked.


----------



## Chasint

berndf said:


> ..._It has stopped raining_. Would you contend that this  statement would also be appropriate, if it has started raining again afterwards?...


I'm sorry to jump in on a question to someone else but I have my own answer to this.

John: _This rain is dreadful. It has been raining solidly all day. I wish it would stop._
Janet: _You're exaggerating._
John: _Well, I suppose I am. It has stopped raining - on a couple of occasions - but never for more than a minute or two and now it's worse than ever._

There is a situation where the statement is appropriate.

EDITED to remove typos


----------



## Chasint

berndf said:


> Ok, it seems you didn't study logic at university...


I know plenty about formal logic. What relevance has any of that to the meaning and origin of the term Past Perfect (the topic of this thread)? It's clear to me you didn't actually read what I said, or, if you did, you didn't understand it.


----------



## berndf

Biffo said:


> I know plenty about formal logic.


Your relating truth value to lying or truth telling in #129 suggests your are unfamiliar with terminology at least.


Biffo said:


> What relevance has any of that to the meaning and origin of the term Past Perfect (the topic of this thread)?


I tried to explain this in above. 
If existence or non-existence of a state caused by an action is relevant to the truth value of a statement in present perfect of this an action verb then this state is relevant to the meaning of the statement and therefore to the to the present perfect, because we agree that for a non-perfect verb form it wouldn't (_police caught the criminal_).

I may be right or wrong in my proposition but the question is certainly relevant.



Biffo said:


> It's clear to me you didn't actually read what I said, or, if you did, you didn't understand it.


You said nothing that applied to my argument which you criticised.


----------



## berndf

Biffo said:


> I'm sorry to jump in on a question to someone else but I have my own answer to this.


No problem. I am grateful for each input by a native speaker. Shared intuition by the community of native speakers is what eventually matters.


Biffo said:


> John: _This rain is dreadful. It has been raining solidly all day. I wish it would stop._
> Janet: _You're exaggerating._
> John: _Well, I suppose I am. It has stopped raining - on a couple of occasions - but never for more than a minute or two and now it's worse than ever._


Are you sure it shouldn't be _had stopped_ or simply _stopped_. And if not, could you give me your reason for preferring _has stopped_ over _had stopped _or_ stopped_. Has it to do with the fact that this happened in the _recent _past?


----------



## Einstein

John: _Well, I suppose I am. It has stopped raining - on a couple of occasions - but never for more than a minute or two and now it's worse than ever._


> Are you sure it shouldn't be _had stopped or simply stopped. And if not, could you give me your reason for preferring has stopped over had stopped or stopped. Has it to do with the fact that this happened in the recent past?_


Here I agree with "has stopped". It means there have been a couple of occasions when the rain has stopped and there might be more before the end of the day.


----------



## Chasint

berndf said:


> No problem. I am grateful for each input by a native speaker. Shared intuition by the community of native speakers is what eventually matters.
> Are you sure it shouldn't be _had stopped_ or simply _stopped_. And if not, could you give me your reason for preferring _has stopped_ over _had stopped _or_ stopped_. Has it to do with the fact that this happened in the _recent _past?


1. My guess is that other native speakers will agree with my usage here. I think that 'had' would be less appropriate. To make 'had' correct, I would frame the whole conversation in the past, i.e.

2. The problem for me with 'recent' time is that it hasn't been defined. If I simply change the time scale then the whole conversation is still possible. Let us suppose that the people in question live in a particular rainforest where the rain almost never lets up.

John:_ This rain is dreadful. It has been raining solidly all year. I wish it would stop._
Janet: _You're exaggerating._
John: _Well, I suppose I am. It has stopped raining - on a couple of occasions - but never for more than a day or two and now it's worse than ever._

So, how do you define recentness?

3. If I could give you my reason, I wouldn't need this thread! I'm hoping for an explanation to emerge!


----------



## Hamlet2508

berndf said:


> Has it to do with the fact that this happened in the _recent _past?


----------



## Hulalessar

berndf said:


> Shared intuition by the community of native speakers is what eventually matters.



But is it?

If you want to know what is "right" then ask a native speaker and take his first answer. However, ask him for rules and he may start to flounder because the rules are internalised. I have over the last day or two been trying to decide if there are cases where the simple past and present perfect can be used interchangeably but have yet to come to a conclusion.

_A centipede was happy – quite!
__Until a toad in fun
__Said, "Pray, which leg moves after which?"
__This raised her doubts to such a pitch,
__She fell exhausted in the ditch
__Not knowing how to run._


----------



## berndf

Hulalessar said:


> If you want to know what is "right" then ask a native speaker and take his first answer. However, ask him for rules and he may start to flounder because the rules are internalised.


Sure, I completely agree with you. The context of the statement has about a concrete sentence (_It has stopped raining_) and not about a general rule.


----------



## Ёж!

berndf said:


> Now, if we want to explore the_ meaning_ of a synthetic statement, we have to search for facts about the world that alter the truth value of the statement, i.e. facts that would make the statement false. And that's what I did (searching for such facts) in my post you so vehemently attacked.


There is another problem with this. If you show me a ball and tell me that 'this ball is red', then I won't be able to determine the truth value of your statement unless in some obvious cases. The third problem is that what language cares about the most is not truth, or logic in any way: just consider artistic literature, for example. All this makes me think that any truth relation between the world and the statement is very far not the main thing about the statement; it is not even inherent to a statement by default.


----------



## berndf

Biffo said:


> 3. If I could give you my reason, I wouldn't need this thread! I'm hoping for an explanation to emerge!


We have had two different answers so far (#141 and #143). Einstein's explanation seems to be consistent with your remark that it is not a matter of time scale. His interpretation seems to be that that the referent of the sentence is on ongoing state of "raininess" (intermittent, not continuous, rain). This is more in line with the classical aspect interpretation.

Hamlet relates it to recentness. The notion of the present perfect describing events in the recent past is obviously a relatively new development, because (1) this use is much more popular in British than on American English (the most frequent reason for AmE-BrE differences are new developments in BrE) and (2) older grammar books don't mention it. C.T.Onions (the last surviving editor of the OED) has only this to say about the usage of _" [t]he perfect, pluperfect_ and _future perfect _are used to describe a present, past or future state (respectively) resulting from an existing or continued action regarded as completed at the time of utterance" (Modern English syntax, §143; first edition from 1904, quoted from the posthumous 1971 edition, Onions died in 1965), i.e. it only contains the interpretation I gave.

This shift in meaning of course confuses the discussion enormously, but for the reason why the verb form is called _present perfect_ (or short _perfect_) in the 17th/18th century, this new meaning should be irrelevant.


----------



## berndf

Ёж! said:


> There is another problem with this. If you show me a ball and tell me that 'this ball is red', then I won't be able to determine the truth value of your statement unless in some obvious cases. The third problem is that what language cares about the most is not truth, or logic in any way: just consider artistic literature, for example. All this makes me think that any truth relation between the world and the statement is very far not the main thing about the statement; it is not even inherent to a statement by default.


This is about semantics, i.e. about the logical relationship between _possible_ states of the world and the truth value of a statement we analyse, i.e. about which states of the world the statement makes assertions and about which it doesn't. Whether these states of the world are reality or fiction and, if it is supposed to be reality, if we know them for sure (that the ball is in fact red) are different matters.


----------



## Ёж!

berndf said:


> This is about semantics, i.e. about the logical relationship between _possible_ states of the world and the truth value of a statement we analyse, i.e. about which states of the world the statement makes assertions and about which it doesn't. Whether these states of the world are reality or fiction and, if it is supposed to be reality, if we know them for sure (that the ball is in fact red) are different matters.


 When I mentioned literature, I didn't mean it is fiction, I meant that literature is far not only about logical telling, it is also about making action on the reader, and the second prevails (especially in poetry). What I talked of was that this logical relationship is not the main thing about the meaning of a sentence; we are not supposed to care about the world anytime we understand some part of a sentence. So, considering logic is just a very non-powerful way to analyse meanings.


----------



## berndf

Ёж! said:


> So, considering logic is just a very non-powerful way to analyse meanings.


Oh I see. You were talking about intensional vs. extensional meaning. Of course, both are important. In my experience, it makes things much easier, if you get the extensional meanings sorted out first and then analyse the additional "twists" intensional components produce.


----------



## Chasint

*INVITATION (to another thread)*
Dear all
This discussion is of great interest to me and I will return to it. As a result of what has been said I now see where my difficulty lies. I now realise that I started with a question that was too advanced for me. What I really should have begun with is the Simple Present.  I shall start a new thread with a similar theme - in it I suggest that Simple Present is in fact a past tense. I hope that some or all of you will help me with that.

The new thread - present tenses - are they really past tense?

If I can understand that, then I stand more of  chance understanding other verb forms!

Thank you


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## Ёж!

berndf said:


> Oh I see. You were talking about intensional vs. extensional meaning. Of course, both are important. In my experience, it makes things much easier, if you get the extensional meanings sorted out first and then analyse the additional "twists" intensional components produce.


    On the other hand, considering inner features of the meaning can then help to knowingly apply the notion to external objects, to see whether they fit or not; but this cannot work the other way around, because for us much is important that does not have any representation in the world (be it a fiction world or our world). This is my guess, of course.


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