Grammar Bleg
by tgirschJuly 10th, 2008
Where’s Dvorkin when I need him? Why the hell do we call it the “present perfect” when it involves verbs conjugated in the past tense, and refers exclusively to events that happened in the past?
Categories: I do too have a life |
Wow! RSS is much better than a bat signal!
I don’t know the answer, but I’ll ask my wife, who reads grammar books for entertainment.
Because the action is completed, whereas in the imperfect mode the action is on going.
In Russian there is no present perfect. The perfect form has only past and future tenses, while the imperfect form is the only form with a present tense.
Generally the present perfect can only exist for an instant, as in “I’m done”, and only describes the point at which the imperfect becomes perfect.
Bryan:
Your “explanation” seems to explain the “perfect” part, when it’s the “present” part that confuses me. It’s not present at all — it’s past.
Also, from my understanding, “I’m done” is not present perfect, it’s present simple. “I have finished” is present perfect.
The present perfect progressive makes a little more sense to me, because it implies that although the action started at some indeterminate point in the past, it is still ongoing in the present (e.g., “I have been learning English.”).
Side note to David: Sadly, ThinkGeek.com never responded to my letter chiding them for their persistent misuse of the term “acronym” when actually talking about initialisms.
I don’t think I’ve ever visited ThinkGeek.com, but clearly they’re ratbastards who don’t understand how they’re diminishing the language. Unfortunately, saying that makes me sound like the kind of people I often like to sneer at.
I think the “present” part is because the action is viewed from the perspective of the present, even though it happened in the past.
To make it even fuzzier, in Germanic languages, not including English, it’s common to use the imperfect instead of the past tense in conversation.
In think there’s an underlying problem: The terminology invented by grammarians, which is often like something badly translated from tablets found in a crashed saucer in Roswell, New Mexico. Imperfectly translated, one might say.
By the way, when I comment here, I get the error message reproduced below, even though my comment does show up:
Regex ID: 163570 (Morris) appears to be an invalid regex string! Please fix it in the Blacklist control panel.
Present perfect is most often used to indicate either that the action has just been completed or in a time period still ongoing.
For example: “Judy arrived at the party” tells us she arrived but doesn’t say when. “Judy has arrived at the party” indicates she arrived very recently.
Or for example: In “I have been shopping twice this week,” the possibility is that you may shop more, because the week is not yet over. If you used the past tense of “I went shopping twice this week,” you are indicating that you will not shop again this week.
Present perfect, which uses some present tense form of “have,” is intended to distinguish such actions from those that were completed at some point in the past, where the past tense “had” is used to form past perfect.
That is, “Judy has arrived at the party” (present perfect) says Judy arrived very recently, while “Judy had arrived at the party” (past perfect) says Judy arrived at some more distant point in the past and other events have taken place since.
Or so I’ve always been given to understand.
Or for example: In “I have been shopping twice this week,” the possibility is that you may shop more, because the week is not yet over. If you used the past tense of “I went shopping twice this week,” you are indicating that you will not shop again this week.
Sweetie, I’m sorry but I can’t drive you to the mall this afternoon. since your description of previous shopping endeavors was in the past perfect to, you have implicitly promised to not go shopping for a while.
…Hey, come back here with the car keys!
AIUI it’s called the “present perfect” because it’s a form of the present tense.
I have arrived - “have” is the present tense.
I’m gone - “am” is the present tense.
and so on. “Tense” is a grammatical category and should not be confused with meaning.
That’s a decent explanation, although I don’t think “I am gone” is actually an example of present perfect; again, it’s present simple.
“I go” is present simple. “I am gone” or “I have gone” is perfect perfect. “go” can use either “be” or “have”.
In A Student’s Introduction to English Grammar, Huddleston and Pullum simply call it the perfect tense
“I am gone” is present simple, because in this context “am” is a verb in the present tense, and “gone” is actually an adjective, no different than “I am happy” or “I am sad.” The present perfect requires a second verb, conjugated in the past tense, and I believe it requires the first (present tense) verb to be “has” or “have.”
The present perfect is usually marked by “have” and the past participle (not a verb in the past tense). In early forms of English, unergative verbs like “go” and “come” formed the present perfect with “be”, as in “I am gone” and “the Lord is come.” In Modern English, whether “gone” in “I am gone” is present perfect or an adjective depends on your analysis, I guess, and perhaps it was a bad example to choose. Note that if “gone” is an adjective, then we might expect to be able to say “I am very gone” and “he was a gone man.”
Note that if “gone” is an adjective, then we might expect to be able to say “I am very gone” and “he was a gone man.”
That doesn’t follow. Many adjectives cannot (properly) be modified in that way. For example something can’t be “very unique,” nor can a woman be “very pregnant.” These are called “complete” adjectives. You can’t be “more gone” or “less gone” or “very gone.” Something can, however, be “almost gone.”
I did say “might”. It was just a thought.
We certainly can say “very unique” - “unique” has been used to mean “unusual, rare” for about a hundred years, and has modified for over a hundred years by authors like Charlotte Brontë and Arthur Miller.
We certainly can say “very unique” - “unique” has been used to mean “unusual, rare” for about a hundred years
That doesn’t make it right.
The problem is, because of that shift in meaning, we now no longer have a word that means what “unique” is actually supposed to mean.
In case you haven’t figured it out, that one in particular is a huge pet peeve of mine. I suspect David shares my distaste for that particular usage, based on his position of similar misuse of “literally“.
If usage doesn’t make it right, what does make it right? I’ll go with the usage of good writers, and the definition given in good dictionaries, over someone’s random opinion. And we can certainly still communicate the “one of a kind” meaning: “one of a kind”.
The same with “literally” - it’s been used as a figurative intensifier since around 1760, and it’s been used by Austen, Alcott, Fitzgerald and Joyce. Call it a use you don’t like, but there’s no evidence for saying it’s a misuse.
I didn’t realize that classic authors never misused words.
Let me turn it back around on you, then. Since those words no longer mean what they used to mean, what words should I use in their stead? This illustrates why I classify those usages as “wrong.” Instead of clarifying, they introduce confusion. Now, instead of knowing that when I say “unique” I mean “unique,” you have to try to guess what I mean.
Believe me, I know I’m fighting a losing battle on this one. Nobody gives a shit about precision in meaning any more, and exaggeration and hyperbole are all the rage. So I’m going to have to live with the fact that I now need several words to precisely describe something, when I only used to need one word.
I’m saying that examining the usage of words is the only way to determine what words mean. If we don’t go by the relevant evidence (usage), then we’re going by opinion, which might be misinformed or wrong.
Can you provide real examples of “unique” where the meaning is ambiguous between “one of a kind” and “unusual, rare”? Have a look in Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage page 297 and you’ll see many examples where the meaning is clear.
The same semantic shift happened with “singular” but no one complains about that.
You are fighting a losing battle because you’re fighting language change. If language change means lack of precision and other bad things, then it’s a wonder we can still communicate. The thing is that language has been changing for as long as there has been language, but we can still make the distinctions we want to make, no matter what language we speak. On the other hand, you’re in good company; people have been complaining about language change for thousands of years.
Can you provide real examples of “unique” where the meaning is ambiguous between “one of a kind” and “unusual, rare”?
This vase is unique. That could mean rare, and it could mean one of a kind. If I want to make sure my meaning is properly understood, I actually have to say “one of a kind.”
The same semantic shift happened with “singular” but no one complains about that.
I do.
(People just don’t complain about it as much because the word isn’t very widely used, correctly or otherwise.)
You are fighting a losing battle because you’re fighting language change.
But I’m only fighting certain kinds of language change. I don’t mind new words being coined, for example, especially when those new words fill a gap in the language as it existed before. And I don’t mind shifts in meaning, either, when shifts result in more clarity instead of less.
Am I curmudgeonly about this? Absolutely. But I don’t think unjustifiably so.
Sorry, when I said real example I meant a citation. Lexicographers determine what words mean by looking at citations: examples in running text. This usually provides context, which is a great help in resolving ambiguity, since potential ambiguity is everywhere. A single sentence without context doesn’t really demonstrate anything. “I trimmed the decorations” is ambiguous as well, but this doesn’t prove that the two contradictory meanings of “trim” get confused in usage.
You might be interested in looking at the history of usage concerns in English if you haven’t looked already, for instance in Ronald Wardhaugh’s “Proper English”. People have been complaining about the deterioration of English for at least 200 years, and the complaints are rarely consistent or logical. And the language changes anyway, so while you’re in good company, it’s a futile excercise.
also see http://www.slate.com/id/2129105/
Oh, I know it’s futile, but bitching about it gives me something to do.
As I mentioned before, it’s one thing if words change meaning over time (happens all the time), and quite another if we’re left without a word that means what the other word used to mean. That latter category is generally the kind that upsets me.
And no, I don’t have a citation handy.
This thread is unique.