Language/English/Grammar/Perfect-Tenses

Perfect Tenses

Introduction

The term ”perfect tense” for English verb tenses is unfortunate and often misleading. This term was derived via Latin and used because the syntactical forms of perfect tenses in English have their analogues in Latin perfect tense forms. However, grammatical function regularly differs significantly.

This is in contrast to ”le parfait” in French and other language which is closer in grammatical function to its Latin equivalent form. For French perfect tense forms, "perfect" literally means "completely done" - just like for Latin verbs and the original meaning of "perfect" in Latin.

To give a basic, common example, in English of an uncompleted, or "imperfect", event - where a present perfect simple tense describes an uncompleted event that starts in the past, continues to the present and even into the future - then consider this sentence:

”I have been at home for 3 weeks.”

In this case,

• Start of being at home = 3 weeks ago.
• Am I at home right now? Yes.
• Will I still be at home tomorrow? Very highly likely (but I could leave home right now).

Surprisingly, for a completed so-called ”perfect” event, when it starts and finishes in the past and is of specific duration, the most common tense form used in English is simple past:

”I was at home for 3 weeks.”

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Incidentally, this sentence in its context could have easily been translated from Latin where a perfect tense was used!

There is a much simpler way of defining what a "perfect tense" is in English which corresponds to its real usage - think of it as being actions starting at a time in the past and which are relevant/important in some way to the point in time under consideration, whether it is in the past, the present or the future. Simple tense forms tend to express isolated or supporting facts, or secondary information of interest within the context.

The 3 simple perfect tenses in English emphasize the "completeness" of actions rather than a continuous aspect. To highlight the on-going nature of an action, there are 3 perfect continuous tenses.

Basic Grammatical Forms

Simple perfect tense forms have the following basic pattern:

an auxiliary verb "have" (with the appropriate tense form) + the past participle of the verb.

Continuous perfect tenses are formed as follows:

an auxiliary verb "have" (with the appropriate tense form) + been + the gerund of the verb.

Present Perfect

I have eaten.

I have taken my bathe.

Past Perfect

I had eaten.

I took my bathe.

Future Perfect

I will have eaten.

I will/would/shall have taken my bathe.