# have been talking and we <decided>



## Phoebe1200

School of rock, TV show
Context: A bunch of cool upperclassmen are going to throw a party this weekend and to which only the coolest of the cool are invited. But there's also one underclassman, Freddie, who they consider cool enough to invite.

*Upperclassman guy to Freddie*: Hey, Freddie. Come here. The guys and I have been talking and we *decided *you're cool. We're throwing a pretty epic party this weekend. Want to come?

Am I right that he used the past simple with "decided" because of the two reasons below?

1) since he already used the present perfect continuous with "have been talking" as a way to introduce his statement it's not necessary to use the present perfect with "decided".
2) he used the past simple with "decided" because he viewed his decision making as something that happened in the past even if they just finished talking about whether to invite Freddie or not seconds ago, like he decided a second ago and the decision is already made.


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## boozer

The sentence consists of two clauses joined together by 'and'. No subordinate clause. The sequence of tenses rule does not apply and, in any case, it would have applied only in respect of subordinate clauses.

And then, he could be using the past tense for any number of reasons  , but for me the main reason is that, in his mind, he knows exactly when they made the decision and is referring to that particular past point.


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## Phoebe1200

Thank you for your reply.


boozer said:


> but for me the main reason is that, in his mind, he knows exactly when they made the decision and is referring to that particular past point.


Then it's close to my second reason, right?


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## boozer

Yes, it is close. There are many situations in which the speaker could use either the present perfect or the past simple tense. The speaker instinctively selects the one that better suits his thought even when the same message is being conveyed in practice:
I decided to sue you - focuses on the moment the decision was made
I have decided to sue you - focuses on the present-time implications of that decision made in the past


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## Phoebe1200

Thank you very much, boozer.

So the OP could have been used with the present perfect too, right?

_The guys and I have been talking and we'*ve* decided you're cool._


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## Vronsky

I'd say "we have decided" in the following context:

"The guys and I have been talking and we have decided you must go."
or
"Well, we've talked it over, we've decided you're right, and we're going to do what you suggested." (from the internet)

In these examples, "our" decision has an important effect in the present.

But without context: "we have decided you're cool." 

Perhaps it's going to work in:
"The guys and I have been talking and we have decided you're cool. So now we're going to worship you."

But maybe I'm over-thinking this.


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## boozer

Phoebe1200 said:


> Thank you very much, boozer.
> 
> So the OP could have been used with the present perfect too, right?
> 
> _The guys and I have been talking and we'*ve* decided you're cool._


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## Phoebe1200

Vronsky said:


> "The guys and I have been talking and we have decided you must go."
> 
> "Well, we've talked it over, we've decided you're right, and we're going to do what you suggested."


But the past simple would work in the above examples as well, right?


boozer said:


>


Thanks.


Vronsky said:


> "our" decision has an important effect in the present.


But doesn't their decision have an important effect on the present in the OP too because only after deciding that Freddie is cool they are now willing to invite him to the party?


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## Vronsky

Phoebe1200 said:


> But doesn't their decision have an important effect on the present in the OP too because only after deciding that Freddie is cool they are now willing to invite him to the party?


Maybe they felt that it was not a big deal to invite someone to their party. Or maybe they are simply Americans, I don't know


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## wandle

It is an interesting question. Various options have been avoided: (a) 'We were talking and we decided': (b) 'We have been talking and we have decided'; (c) 'We have been talking and we think'.

All these strike me as more committal than the text. The present perfect 'have been talking' implies the period of discussion is not yet over (they might reconsider). The past simple 'we decided' isolates that conclusion in the past, so that they are not necessarily committed to it now.

In other words, much depends on how Freddie responds. If he now replies or acts in an uncool way, he will quickly find that he is no longer invited.


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## Phoebe1200

wandle said:


> The present perfect 'have been talking' implies the period of discussion is not yet over (they might reconsider).


I thought it implies up to this moment, doesn't it?


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## Phoebe1200

By the way, I don't know if it makes any difference but before saying "you're cool" in the OP there was a pause in the speaker's speech. I just don't know how to indicate a pause in writing. Is it with using three dots?


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## boozer

Phoebe1200 said:


> I thought it implies up to this moment, doesn't it?


It does. The problem is whether the present moment is included or not.
It could be either.
I see your hands all in paint. You are watching TV, but I still ask ' Have you been painting?' present moment not included.
And then I ask
'How long have you been watching TV?' present moment included.


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## Phoebe1200

boozer said:


> It does. The problem is whether the present moment is included or not.
> It could be either.
> I see your hands all in paint. You are watching TV, but I still ask ' Have you been painting?' present moment not included.
> And then I ask
> 'How long have you been watching TV?' present moment included.


Thank you.


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## kentix

That pause could be significant. The upperclassman could potentially have decided to say something else at the last moment if he suddenly realized that there was a reason the group might be wrong about Freddie. But when Freddie didn't do anything obviously stupid the upperclassman went ahead and invited him. He might have been hesitant because it wasn't a normal thing to invite an underclassman, no matter what they decided.


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## kentix

... (dot dot dot) normally means intentionally omitted words (words in the original not written here) so I wouldn't use it for pause. I don't know if there is a standard way. I used [pause] once.


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## Phoebe1200

wandle said:


> 'We were talking and we decided':


But for the past progressive to be used the meaning has to be that they were talking about it just now before Freddie walked over, right?
While "have been talking" indicates a period of time, right?


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## Phoebe1200

kentix said:


> That pause could be significant. The upperclassman could potentially have decided to say something else at the last moment if he suddenly realized that there was a reason the group might be wrong about Freddie. But when Freddie didn't do anything obviously stupid the upperclassman went ahead and invited him. He might have been hesitant because it wasn't a normal thing to invite an underclassman, no matter what they decided.


No, it wasn't really that kind of pause.


kentix said:


> ... (dot dot dot) normally means intentionally omitted words (words in the original not written here) so I wouldn't use it for pause. I don't know if there is a standard way. I used [pause] once.


Thanks.


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## kentix

"has to be" are strong words.

I think we're back to "is likely" and "suggests". Things are very, very flexible in these areas.

_"We were talking yesterday and we decided..."_


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## SevenDays

Phoebe1200 said:


> School of rock, TV show
> Context: A bunch of cool upperclassmen are going to throw a party this weekend and to which only the coolest of the cool are invited. But there's also one underclassman, Freddie, who they consider cool enough to invite.
> 
> *Upperclassman guy to Freddie*: Hey, Freddie. Come here. The guys and I have been talking and we *decided *you're cool. We're throwing a pretty epic party this weekend. Want to come?
> 
> Am I right that he used the past simple with "decided" because of the two reasons below?
> 
> 1) since he already used the present perfect continuous with "have been talking" as a way to introduce his statement it's not necessary to use the present perfect with "decided".
> 2) he used the past simple with "decided" because he viewed his decision making as something that happened in the past even if they just finished talking about whether to invite Freddie or not seconds ago, like he decided a second ago and the decision is already made.



Both of your reasons are equally valid; they just look at things from two different perspectives: _aspect _and _time_.

(1) is really about _aspect_. The simple past is what's called the _unmarked aspect_ (or _default aspect_), which, in this context, basically means that "decided" is self-referential in showing _perfective aspect _("completed action") and doesn't need auxiliary "have" as support (because "have" already appears earlier in the sentence, as you've noted). This is particularly the case with verbs that denote "events" (those actions that have a clear end point, such as "decide"). It would be unusual, it seems to me, to use the simple past of a _stative verb_ this way. So, we are likely to say "The guys and I have been talking and we *think *you are cool" rather than "The guys and I have been talking and we _thought_ you are cool" ??? (but, of course, natives may disagree).

(2) is about _time_; where "decided" happened before the moment of speaking, as you pointed out.


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## boozer

SevenDays said:


> ... and doesn't need auxiliary "have" as support (because "have" already appears earlier in the sentence, as you've noted)...


Are you saying that
1) "decided" is actually perfective because
2) the 'have' in 'have been talking' covers it?


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## wandle

That is ruled out by the text: the presence of the pronoun in 'we decided' shows that the full verb is given in that phrase.


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## wandle

wandle said:


> The present perfect 'have been talking' implies the period of discussion is not yet over (they might reconsider).





Phoebe1200 said:


> I thought it implies up to this moment, doesn't it?


That is why it implies the period of discussion is not yet over.


wandle said:


> (a) 'We were talking and we decided'





Phoebe1200 said:


> But for the past progressive to be used the meaning has to be that they were talking about it just now before Freddie walked over, right?


No. The past tense indicates any time in the past which the speaker is *not* connecting to the present.


> While "have been talking" indicates a period of time, right?


The continuous form of the verb, in all tenses, draws attention to the action as a process over time.

'Have been talking' indicates 'over a period of time which the speaker is mentally connecting to the present'.
'Were talking' indicates 'over a period of time which the speaker is mentally disconnecting from the present'.


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## boozer

wandle said:


> That is ruled out by the text: the presence of the pronoun in 'we decided' shows that the full verb is given in that phrase.


Agreed. Hence my question.


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## SevenDays

boozer said:


> Are you saying that
> 1) "decided" is actually perfective because
> 2) the 'have' in 'have been talking' covers it?



The simple past *is* perfective; that's its nature when it comes to _aspect_. As a result, it doesn't need auxiliary "have" (but the auxiliary may be added for stylistics/pragmatic/contextual reasons; for example, to underscore a "temporal" link between the past and the present/moment of speaking, as Phoebe notes in [2]).


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## boozer

SevenDays said:


> The simple past *is* perfective; that's its nature when it comes to _aspect_.


Can you please explain what exactly you mean by that.


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## karlalou

boozer said:


> Can you please explain what exactly you mean by that.


Don't you see that? When something is described in the simple past, it's apparently saying it's already happened without the help of the perfect form. 

I guess we, at the end of the long history, have not much choice but use any language forms because they exist..

In my language, we seem to have no past tense, but only perfect aspect. I just saw it in an online dictionary, but it's provided by a long-trusted publisher, and thinking it in this way makes more sense because we use the same form regardless of past or present or future. We use it to express completion, or to tell the sequence of events. It's basically one-syllable that it can't be simpler than that. That sounds nice and easy, but we got so many grammatical forms to express a tiny bit of emotion all the time, and these are one of contributors to make the language so complicated to learn. So, as a speaker of such a language, I never believe that a grammar controls the sentences to stay dry or bland.


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## boozer

karlalou said:


> Don't you see that? When something is described in the simple past, it's apparently saying it's already happened without the help of the perfect form.


No, I do not see it. English verbs have no perfective or imprefective aspect in and of themselves.
Perfective aspect - Wikipedia

And no, that is not the nature of the simple past, as Seven Days puts it. 

The perfective aspect can be added to the base verb by means of constructing a special verb form that uses the auxiliary 'have'. This is what we call 'perfect tenses'.

This is why I wanted to know what exactly he meant...


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## karlalou

Ah.. I don't have any problem to understand what SevenDays is saying. How is it different from what I said? 

In Japanese, when we especially use the form to express something has done, it can also express the sense of regret that I'm almost expecting that the English perfect form also has some kind of subjective sense.


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## wandle

Perfect and perfective are two different things, as the Wikipedia page cited by *boozer* makes clear.

In English, the past tense does have perfective aspect. This means that it expresses the action as a single thing, or a plain fact: 'Donald Trump was elected US President in 2016'.

The present perfect tense, on the other hand, tells us that the speaker is expressing some present significance of the fact, often used in reporting news: 'North Korea has carried out another missile launch'.


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## SevenDays

boozer said:


> No, I do not see it. English verbs have no perfective or imprefective aspect in and of themselves.
> Perfective aspect - Wikipedia
> 
> And no, that is not the nature of the simple past, as Seven Days puts it.
> 
> The perfective aspect can be added to the base verb by means of constructing a special verb form that uses the auxiliary 'have'. This is what we call 'perfect tenses'.
> 
> This is why I wanted to know what exactly he meant...



Wikipedia should be more precise. In English, *aspec*t is not an_ inflectional category_, but English still can show an event or situation denoted by the verb as _perfective_ (showing the verb event in its *totality*, as a complete whole) or _imperfective_ (showing the event as it *unfolds*, and therefore not as a complete whole), both of which are independent of "time." It just happens that English does this through _meaning_ rather than morphology.  

In _I ate an apple,_ it's understood that I ate the "whole" apple; I don't need to use auxiliary "have" to show the _totality_ of this event. So, yes, the simple past *is*_ perfective_ in nature. Being that aspect is independent of "time," I can also show _perfective_ aspect with infinitives, because infinitives are _atemporal:_ In _I will eat an apple_, it's also understood that _all_ of the apple will be consumed. Auxiliary "have" is not needed syntactically, but is added for contextual/semantic/pragmatic reasons: _I have eaten an apple_. Traditional grammar calls this the "present perfect tense," but in syntax "tense" is strictly morphological, and English has just two morphological tenses, _present_ and _past_. Everything else are _combinations _(in "have eaten," the combination present tense of the auxiliary "have" plus past participle "eaten"). In other words, there are no "present perfect" morphemes in _l_ _have eaten_ to call it a "tense," but "present perfect tense" is commonly found in grammar books (the tradition of traditional grammar is very strong).      

_Imperfective_ aspect means we are looking at an event from within to see it unfolding: _She eats an apple, I am eating an apple_.


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## boozer

Verbs are generally *not *perfective in nature. Neither is their past tense.
The form 'ate' does not denote a completed action in itself.
_I read and ate during the flight. I ate for 3 hours._
The aspect one infers depends on context.


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## wandle

boozer said:


> The form 'ate' does not denote a completed action in itself.
> _I read and ate during the flight. I ate for 3 hours._


There are two senses of completion here. One is grammatical (concerned with the syntax), one is semantic (concerned with the factual message).

In the grammatical sense, those actions are complete. All the reading or eating done on the flight is complete. It is over. The verb is simply reporting that it was done. It is not highlighting the process or the extent of it, merely that it occurred. That is the meaning of perfective aspect.

In the semantic sense, it may well be true that the book was not read in full. It may well be that not all the food was eaten. Those facts are not about the grammar and they do not affect the question of perfective aspect.

Conversely, if asked how you passed the time during the flight, you might say, 'I was finishing War and Peace'. In this case, in the semantic sense, the reading was completed, but in the grammatical sense the aspect of the verb is imperfective, because it focuses on the process and expresses it as such.


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## boozer

wandle said:


> That is the meaning of perfective aspect.


No. The meaning of the perfective is whether the process can be viewed as ongoing or as completed, the way I see it. 
Clearly, it can be viewed as both, as wikipedia clearly states.
In and within the action 'I ate for 3 hours' is ongoing, imperfective, never mind that the speaker sees it from his current point of 'now' and that it finished at a certain point.
_I ate an apple_, on the other hand, is clearly perfective. But all that depends on context. 
The past tense is *not* perfective in nature, in my view.


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## wandle

In English, we have the difference between perfective, simply reporting the event, and imperfective, drawing attention to the process.
In the sentence 'I ate for three hours', the verb is simply reporting the fact.

The words 'for three hours' are semantic information: they are not part of the grammar of the verb. They do not conflict with the grammar of the verb, because all actions take time. There is no implication in the idea of perfective that the action must be short. In any case, how short is short? That is relative. The shortest of actions can be expressed by an imperfective verb - easily identifiable in English by the continuous form - and the longest of actions by a perfective verb.

A particle physicist can say 'while the photon was passing' (imperfective) even though the action was unimaginably brief and a cosmologist can say 'The universe expanded (perfective) into its present form' even though that action involved the whole of time.


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## boozer

_Look at how he eats!
Did you see how he ate! _

This is exactly what we are doing - drawing attention to the process. Imperfective._(as opposed to 'Did you see how he ate a whole cow' - perfective)_

But we can have this discussion dragging on for days, even years and aeons, from a cosmological point of view.  I have shown you what wikipedia says about it and I understand it is not the most reputed source that there is.

However, can anyone show me a more reputed source that agrees with this... errm, proposition: 'the English past tense is perfective in nature'.

I disagree and will continue to disagree until an authoritative source proves me wrong. Then I will be really pleased to write 'I stand corrected!'


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## wandle

boozer said:


> _Look at how he eats!
> Did you see how he ate!_
> This is exactly what we are doing - drawing attention to the process.


That is a semantic point. That is what those sentences are telling us in factual terms. That is a separate issue from the grammar.

Those verbs are perfective in aspect. We can see that at once because they are not in the continuous form. They could be put into the continuous form (is eating, was eating), and then they would be imperfective.

If something is stated by Wikipedia, that does not mean it is wrong. A lot of information in Wikipedia happens to be correct. In the present case, Wikipedia makes the correct distinctions:





> The perfective aspect (abbreviated pfv), sometimes called the aoristic aspect,[1] is a grammatical aspect used to describe an action viewed as a simple whole—a unit without interior composition. The perfective aspect is distinguished from the imperfective aspect, which presents an event as having internal structure (such as ongoing, continuous, or habitual actions). The term perfective should be distinguished from perfect (see below).


The reference given by note 1 is: Bernard Comrie, 1976, Aspect, p 12.

The fuller title is:
_Aspect: An Introduction to the Study of Verbal Aspect and Related Problems_
By Bernard Comrie


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## boozer

Going back to your quote


wandle said:


> the imperfective aspect, which presents an event as having internal structure (such as ongoing, continuous, or habitual actions)


This surely places examples like 'Did you see how he ate!' in the realm  of past tense, imperfective meaning.

And that combined with the bald statement that the English verb has no aspect (presumably because 'aspect' is context-dependent and the sense of aspect materialises within context)


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## wandle

boozer said:


> This surely places examples like 'Did you see how he ate!' in the realm  of past tense, imperfective meaning.


Again, I can only repeat that that is a semantic point, not a grammatical one. That is about the factual message, not the grammatical meaning.





> the imperfective aspect, which presents an event as having internal structure (such as ongoing, continuous, or habitual actions)


It does, but that does not mean that if the situation is one of ongoing action, then the verb is imperfective.


> the English verb has no aspect (presumably because 'aspect' is context-dependent and the sense of aspect materialises within context)


It is true that in English, unlike some languages, the verb does not have a set of morphological variants on the base form to indicate a set of different aspects. Nevertheless, we do have a clear distinction between perfective and imperfective.

The imperfective aspect is not expressed by context: it is expressed by the continuous form, so that there is never any difficulty in telling which aspect we have in front of us.


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## SevenDays

boozer said:


> _Look at how he eats!
> Did you see how he ate! _
> 
> This is exactly what we are doing - drawing attention to the process. Imperfective._(as opposed to 'Did you see how he ate a whole cow' - perfective)_
> 
> But we can have this discussion dragging on for days, even years and aeons, from a cosmological point of view.  I have shown you what wikipedia says about it and I understand it is not the most reputed source that there is.
> 
> However, can anyone show me a more reputed source that agrees with this... errm, proposition: 'the English past tense is perfective in nature'.
> 
> I disagree and will continue to disagree until an authoritative source proves me wrong. Then I will be really pleased to write 'I stand corrected!'




Most general grammar books that I know don't cover _aspect_ in depth (they keep things simple and talk about_ progressive_ and _non-progressive_ aspect), but we can find what you are looking for in specialized grammars. I found this, in a comparison between Dutch and English:

_... the Dutch Simple Past does not behave like its English counterpart ... the Dutch Simple Past allows for a perfective as well as an imperfective reading, unlike the English Simple Past which always yields a perfective reading for events._

_Organizing Grammar: Linguistics Studies in Honor of Henk van Riemsdijk_, p. 241

And that's what I've been saying. More to the point, the simple past is *unmarked* for perfective aspect. What that means is that the simple past doesn't need any extra linguistic feature to denote _perfectivity_; it does it all on its own: _I ate an apple, I finished the project, I built a house_; all of these "events" as presented as a "simple whole," using Wikipedia's language. (Don't be misled by "an apple;" the presence of this phrase has nothing to do with aspect; it's added to satisfy the _transitivity_ of the verb.) By contrast, to show_ imperfectivity_, you do need to add an extra linguistic feature: auxiliary_ be,_ which "marking" for _imperfect_ aspect; that, in turn, requires the -ing form of the verb: _I was eating an apple, I was finishing the project, I am building a house_.

The simple past, perfective by nature, is compatible with sentence elements that show _duration_. That's what happens in your example _I read and ate during the flight_. "Read" and "ate" are _perfective_ in an environment of "duration" (the "duration" indicated by "during the flight"). Each simple past is presented as a "whole" (with no interior composition) in the time frame shown by "during the flight."


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## boozer

I disagree, Seven.
You have added objects to mark the verb as perfective.
Try dispensing with them and you get a different picture.


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## wandle

boozer said:


> You have added objects to mark the verb as perfective.
> Try dispensing with them and you get a different picture.


SevenDays has already in post 41 discussed the verbs 'read'and 'ate', used without objects, and correctly stated that in the flight example they represent actions viewed as simple facts within that duration.

It is quite true that the actions of reading and eating must have continued for some time, but that is equally true of all actions, however brief. It is also true that the simple past tense in English presents the action, however lengthy, as a simple fact.

Three linguistic authorities have now been cited in support of this point.


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## boozer

Yes, the Dutch authorities have been quoted.
Other authorities have been quoted bluntly disagreeing.
There is nothing perfective about sentences like
Dinosaurs walked the earth millions of years ago.
Within the verb action, it is continuous and ongoing, i.e. imperfective.


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## wandle

boozer said:


> Within the verb action, it is continuous and ongoing, i.e. imperfective


All actions have duration. That is a physical fact. Verbal aspect is not a matter of physics. If your argument were valid, there could be no perfective aspect in any language. It would mean that we could never express any action simply as a fact.


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## boozer

OK, the how complete is the action of dinosaurs walking the earth? They took a tour, circumnavigated the planet once and died? It is most definitely ongoing.


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## wandle

boozer said:


> It is most definitely ongoing.


How can I convey that this point has already been answered (more than once)?

All actions have duration....
... And please read on in post 44.


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## boozer

Has been answered inadequately and in contradiction with the definition quoted by you in post 37. I am stepping out of this discussion now


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## wandle

That quotation correctly defines the perfective aspect as 





> a grammatical aspect used to describe an action viewed as a simple whole—a unit without interior composition.


Example: Dinosaurs *walked* the earth for millions of years.

The imperfective aspect presents the action as e.g. a continuing process.
Example: When dinosaurs* were walking* the earth, human beings did not exist.

If we deny this distinction, it means there is no difference in meaning between 'walked' and 'were walking'.


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## boozer

Go on to the next sentence and you will see how in my example 'walking' has ongoing and habitual structure, just as imperfective is defined.
And yes, in this sense it has more or less the same meaning as 'were walking'. 

I am really stepping out now because agreement seems impossible when you do not apply the definitions you yourself quoted.

You can have the last word now.


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## wandle

Here is a definition of perfective aspect, from LinguaLinks, with examples and a number of sources:


> *Definition*
> Perfective aspect is an aspect that expresses a temporal view of an event or state as a simple whole, apart from the consideration of the internal structure of the time in which it occurs.
> *Examples (English)*
> 
> He _walked_ there.
> This type of construction expresses a temporal view of _walk_ distinct from those expressed in the following constructions:
> 
> He _was walking_ there.
> 
> He _used to walk_ there.
> *Sources*
> Comrie 1976a 12, 18–19
> Ducrot and Todorov 1979 307
> Pei and Gaynor 1954 164
> Hartmann and Stork 1972 20
> Bybee 1985 142
> Elson and Pickett 1988 28
> Crystal 1985 224
> Mish 1991 872


This agrees closely with the definition in Wikipedia and uses the same examples as post 48. The view expressed is the same: the simple past treats the action as a unit, so to speak, whereas the past continuous treats it as an ongoing or repeated process. That is what the difference of these two forms means.


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## wandle

SevenDays said:


> in syntax "tense" is strictly morphological


Why should that be, when the various Indo-European verb endings are themselves analytic in origin, formed by adding units which indicated time, person or number?


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