Talk:Present perfect

I was about to till you this

Vulgarity (since fixed)
The final group of examples use pretty vulgar language, laden with insluts and masturbation references. While obviously an attempt at adding some humor to the article, it's really not fitting for a Wikipedia entry. Examples with more apppropriate language are in order. [unsigned]


 * [Note: This has apparently been fixed since the comment was written.] — Lumbercutter 02:37, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Confusing
OMG this article is sooo confusing

Remove this
I'd rather have this article not exist than someone stumble upon this mess and try to learn something from it.


 * Sad but true re its current state. However, give it a few years to start developing along the lines sketched in the outline below. It could be good. — Lumbercutter 02:37, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Still confusing
I see that 5 years after these comments were written the article is still confusing. I came here for a little doubt about the use of present perfect, when I told myself "I'd read again the whole story to refresh my grammar"... And I didn't understand a single thing. A couple of examples of correct and uncorrect use? Non-jargon words? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.18.64.74 (talk) 09:13, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

At least remove the "In particular languages" section, please!
It is quite telling that this article has a sidebar entitled "English grammar". The article seems to suffer from a certain anglocentrism; as many others, it projects distinctions and concepts familiar to anglophones onto other cultures. This not only generates endless confusion, it is also an act of imperialism. (Neither German nor French are particular cases of English.—I don't speak Spanish or Portuguese, but I'm pretty sure the same goes for these languages too.)

The opening passage of the section might suffice to illustrate this: "In many European languages, including standard German, French and Italian, the present perfect verb form usually does not convey perfect aspect, but rather perfective aspect." Anyone who understands both German and French would be extremely wary of assimilating the German Perfekt to the French passé composé in respect of what these verb forms convey. The similarities are mostly morphological. (One of the many difficulties germanophones have learning the French language is grasping the distinction between the meaning of the imparfait and that of the passé composé. One of the first things students need to learn is that the distinction cannot be mapped onto that of Präteritum and Perfekt.) In German, aspectual differences are not grammaticalized—none of them. So the sentence quoted above is bullshit. I don't quite understand the difference between the perfective and the perfect aspect. Even so, I suspect that the sentence is also wrong regarding French. It is misleading at best: If the passé composé does not convey perfect aspect—what verb form does? The imparfait?—Hardly. The passé simple?—Certainly not.

"The French simple past form, which also conveys perfective aspect, is analogous to the German simple past in that it has been largely displaced by the compound past and relegated to narrative usage; but in French the displacement is greater, to the point that the simple past sounds archaic (whereas in German it merely sounds narrative)." This is another bullshit-sentence. For, "the French simple past form" is ambiguous, or rather misleading since there is more than just one synthetic past form in French: the passé simple and the imparfait. The author means the former. Even if this were corrected, the sentence would still be incorrect. The passé simple sounds wrong (perhaps 'archaic') when used in a conversation, but it is still heavily used in formal writing (not only for the sake of giving a text an 'oldtimy' touch). The situation in German is again different in that the contrast between Perfekt and Präteritum cannot be mapped onto that between conversation and formal writing. It is, for instance, possible and not necessarily bad style to switch between the two forms in the course of a single text; even though—or rather because—the two forms are not entirely interchangeable (When one sends one's colleague a document she had asked for, one might comment on this fact in the accompanying letter by using the Perfekt: "Das von Ihnen gewünschte Dokument habe ich diesem Schreiben beigelegt."—and then go on to relate something that had happened at a previous workplace, using the Präteritum. It would be strange to use the Präteritum in the former sentence. Using the Perfekt in the latter passage might seem dull.). If I remember correctly, switching between passé simple and passé composé within a single text would be a no-go.

Also, I'd like to see a reference for the following statement: "(In fact this 'flawless' sense of perfect evolved by extension from the former sense, because something being created is finished when it no longer has any flaws.)" What is being said here strikes me as unlikely since "perficere" is derived from the stem "facere", which means "to make".TheseusX (talk) 10:06, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Spanish
Since this is the English-language Wikipedia, there's no real reason to have a huge section dedicated to the Spanish present perfect. Tmrobertson 07:08, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Rebuttal
This reasoning is tempting but specious. Actually, the thing to do is to briefly explicate the use of the present perfect in a dozen or so major world languages. For example, it would be a development from the outline sketched below. However, looking around Wikipedia at other articles on language, for example Article (grammar), I see that we currently have light years to go before we start to build a body of pedagogy on this order. Oh boy—a challenge! Can we get there? It's a many-year project! — Lumbercutter 02:32, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Harder to explain than to understand
To the anon who recently wrote:


 * "note - It is not at all difficult. The traditional explanation as shown above is flawed, it always has been. Understanding this grammatical concept is easy, however, in order to gain a high grade in a examination you have to relate to the traditional flawed explanation. Therefore people think it is correct, the same way as people taught that the Earth was flat, not so long ago. Amendments to this page are quickly deleted."

It's not that there is a conspiracy against truth here. It's just that in improving the explanation, it can be hard to get the pedagogy right. In other words, it's harder to explain than to understand. (And, as elsewhere in the study of language, it is hard to get the epistemology right, too [i.e., schoolmarm notions versus linguistic science]). This article could stand to be better, yes. If you have time to try and make it better, in a way that readers can understand, then certainly go ahead and try. It's not as easy as it seems. Your comment that "amendments to this page are quickly deleted" makes it sound like good explanations were deleted. I don't remember that happening while I've been watching this article. Maybe some random additions that weren't better than what was already here were deleted. (I lack time to go scour the history at the moment. If I'm wrong, just show me a relevant edit diff.) That's not a conspiracy, and it's unfair to others to put it down to that. — ¾-10 04:18, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

To be
Hi. Many languages today still use to be instead of to have as their auxiliary for several verbs when forming the present perfect (or their version of the present perfect). Of the languages I'm familiar with, I believe this is the passé composé in French and the Perfekt in German. The verbs that take to be are intransitive verbs that usually denote a change in position or state. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't English used to do this as well, a few hundred years ago? Today, all our verbs take to have, but we would used to say They are fallen instead of They have fallen. Just as the French still say Ils sont tombés and the Germans would still say Sie sind gefallen. I'm certainly no expert on this, but shouldn't this be mentioned in the article as well? And if there's already material that deals with this, can someone please direct me to that page? Thanks Erebos12345 (talk) 13:09, 5 September 2008 (UTC)


 * You're correct, and this article is the place where all of those points should be discussed—it just has not yet been developed sufficiently. Actually, I think that it may have already addressed at one point in time the variation of auxiliary verbs (to-be-vs-to-have) across time and languages, but suffered some misguided "improvement" since then. Hopefully eventually someone among us will get time to devote proper attention to revamping and expanding this article. — ¾-10 21:07, 5 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Update: Well, after writing the above reply, I just couldn't resist spending some time plucking the lowest-hanging fruit among the needed changes. The article still could use plenty of improvement, but at least it's a bit better for now. — ¾-10 22:50, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Ok, I've done some expansion in that section. I've split it up a little bit, and added examples pertaining to each language. I also searched up some English examples from older texts. Hopefully, this is a step in the right direction. However, I still haven't figured out how to beautify wikipedia pages, and I've completely forgot how to cite quotes. Hopefully, someone can help polish it up, or I'll do it later when I have more time. Thanks Erebos12345 (talk) 22:24, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Past Perfect? - The term has no validity with reference to English!
The use of the term past perfect with reference to English is an artificial construct: no such tense morphology exists within English verbs. The use of the term present in the description of the tense, alongside the word “perfect”, with its linguistically accepted sense of “completed”, “over and done with”, is a non sequitur. In English, as in other Germanic languages, there exist a perfect tense and a pluperfect tense, both utilising an auxiliary verb, ‘have’ in English, ‘haben’ and ‘sein’ in German. Both are past tenses.

The concept of aspect implied in the term present perfect is completely foreign to the English language and to English speakers, arguably also to speakers of most West European languages. Aspect is plainly not an overt feature of verbal morphology in English. (I write as a language post-graduate.) I submit that to most educated English speakers 'aspect' with reference to English, would appear to be a specious concept concocted for use within the linguistic meta-language by philosophical linguists - Slavicists and others - who seek to impose the concept of aspect upon English in order to achieve some kind of 'universal norm' within their discipline. English deals with what is referred to as 'aspect' by means of choice of tense, plus or minus features of adverbial governance ("qualifiers"): that is all that may reasonably be stated with reference to English.

The bottom line is that every language evolves in its own particular way, though languages do frequently share common characteristics. 86.145.207.120 (talk) 14:22, 16 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I already responded to you at Talk:Grammatical aspect, but again, English has aspect, it is just not usually represented in overt morphology.
 * As for "past perfect," the term in English is generally used interchangeably with "pluperfect" (in fact, English past perfect verbs translate into French plus-que-parfait verbs, for example). &mdash;Politizer talk / contribs 20:18, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Spanish: haber vs. tener
The current version states (correctly as far as I know): “Standard Spanish is like English in that haber is always the auxiliary...” Does anyone think we should mention that haber does not mean to have in the sense of possession and ownership. In Spanish tener is equivalent to English to have when referring to possession, and haber in many instances is best translated to English as there be (there is/there are) and takes the form hay (singlular) or han (plural). I'm not really sure whether these are considered special cases of the present tense form of haber or what their status is. Compare (my Spanish is rusty so please forgive any mistakes, though I do appreciate corrections for my own benefit):
 * Hay una mosca en la casa. (haber)
 * There is a fly in the house.


 * Él ha comido la manzana. (haber)
 * He has eaten the apple.


 * Él tiene [en su posesión] una manzana. (tener)
 * He has [in his possesion] an apple.

Perhaps this additional information is unnecessary and even confusing. I understand that the purpose of this article is not to teach Spanish grammar, but is it worth at least mentioning that significant differences exist between to have and haber when haber is not used as an auxiliary verb, in contrast with French avoir, for example? Myceteae (talk) 21:22, 12 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Good point. I added a sentence under the "Spanish" section that I believe communicates it well. "Spanish differs from French, German, and English in that its have cognate, haber, serves only as auxiliary in the modern language; it never indicates possession, which is handled instead by the verb tener." — ¾-10 02:45, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Disagreement
Correction to "Outline Sketch" above: The tense used "to express action that has been completed with respect to the present" is the past tense. The present perfect tense denotes past action or condition that continues into the present, e.g, "I have lived in Nashville for 10 years" (and still do) vs. "I lived in Nashville for 10 years (but now live in Laredo).

Correction: "I have finished" is NOT an example of the present perfect.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.62.228.67 (talk) 01:37, 27 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Re "NOT": Merriam-Webster Collegiate is just the beginning of the refutation. — ¾-10 00:52, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Additional example for English Past Perfect
I think another good example for English usage is the quote "I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." It was made famous by Oppenheimer, describing one of the first nuclear tests (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer#Trinity). It's from Christopher Isherwood's translation of the Sanskrit epic Bhagavad-Gita (http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-significance-of-the-grammatical-error-in-now-I-am-become-Death-the-destroyer-of-worlds)

I'm a Wikipedia noob, and I couldn't track down perfect sources, but hopefully someone here with an interest in archaic grammar can write it up??

18.111.77.187 (talk) 18:26, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

You have gone
The Present Perfect of 'go', used in the sense of physical movement, in standard UK and American English indicates that the subject of the verb is absent, because it is essentially one-way: 'He has gone' means 'he is not here'. 'I have gone' can be written (in a note), but not spoken. 'You have gone': I do not know how this would be used or what it would mean. The two-way form is 'been'. Pamour (talk) 12:35, 27 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I can think of a usage for "You have gone". It means, at this moment when I talk to "you", "you" find yourself in a different location or state in which you weren't before. For example, "You've gone crazy" or "You've gone too far". - 187.20.71.73 (talk) 04:37, 6 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Sheesh. It's nearly always possible to find examples for constructions that sound absurd when taken literally, such as I've died or We've snowed. There are always unusual contexts and possibilities that aren't obvious, such as metaphor, allegory, anthropomorphisation, illusions, magic tricks, mental illness, fiction, spiritual contexts, or talking to oneself. For example, I've died can be used metaphorically or occur in a story where a ghost is talking. We've snowed can occur in a fairy-tale where clouds are talking. And You've gone, even when it literally means "You've gone away", may be exclaimed, possibly in anger or disbelief, by a person who discovers that the person they were just talking to has disappeared (after returning from a distraction, for example), possibly with the expectation or hope that they may hear it. Sometimes people say things that out of context sound illogical. That's life, get used to it! --Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:08, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Examples
Per a a discussion on WP:NORB, I took it upon myself to change the first English example to a variant of one found in Uses of English verb forms. Apparently certain verbs (to have, to know, etc) default to a present perfect even when most verbs would use present perfect progressive, and so they may not be the best for examples. I switched over "we have had the same car for eleven years" to "We have lived in Sapporo for eleven years". I think the rest of at least the "English" section could use a bit of cleanup to be more encyclopedic, and the whole article needs a heavy dose of citations, but I'll leave that for now. 0x0077BE [talk/contrib] 20:07, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Completed action
"He sang in many countries" indicates that his singing career is now complete.

"He has sung in many countries" indicates that his singing career may be incomplete, and he may sing in more countries in future.

Hence the tense does not indicate completed action.Ehrenkater (talk) 15:41, 17 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes and no, but I agree it's not the best way to summarize it. I'm going to remove it. Joefromrandb (talk) 04:41, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

English
Present 2 196.189.118.25 (talk) 16:37, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

Prefect perfect tense
British 202.80.216.205 (talk) 10:26, 1 December 2022 (UTC)