Perfect aspect
Encyclopedia
In linguistics
, the perfect (abbreviated or ), occasionally called the retrospective to avoid confusion with the perfective aspect
, is a combination of aspect
and tense
that calls a listener's attention to the consequences, at some time of perspective (time of reference), generated by a prior situation, rather than just to the situation itself. The time of perspective itself is given by the tense of the helping verb, and usually the tense and the aspect are combined into a single tense-aspect form: the present perfect, the past perfect (also known as the pluperfect), or the future perfect
.
The perfect is distinct from the perfective, which marks a situation as a single event, without internal structure. A sentence in the perfective aspect cannot be in the perfect and vice versa (except in Modern Greek and Bulgarian).
The perfect can refer to events in the past that have been finished (such as “He has already eaten dinner”) as well as events that are ongoing (such as “He had been working on this novel for a year” or “He has composed operas for twenty years”); all are characterized by continued relevance to the speaker at the time of perspective.
The perfect contrasts with the prospective
, which encodes the present relevance or anticipation of a future event. While the perfect is a relatively uniform category cross-linguistically, its relation to the experiential and resultative
aspects is complex — the latter two are not simply restricted cases of the perfect.
"to have" and then appending the verb's past participle
form. Verbs in the perfect can be in the active or passive voice
. Active verbs combine "to have" and the past participle form of the main verb ("have done," "They have done so much work"). Passive verbs in the perfect require two past participle verb forms: "been" (the past participle of "to be") and the past participle of the main verb ("has been seen," "He has been seen by the doctor").
The conjugation of the verb "to have" determines the tense of the overall construction: 1) "have" and "has" in the present perfect, 2) "had" in the past perfect, and 3) "will have" and "shall have" in the future perfect.
The perfect can be combined with the progressive aspect
, a type of imperfective aspect
. In the progressive aspect, the verb "to be" is in the past participle form ("been"), while the main verb is in the present participle form ("has been teaching," "She has been teaching for ten years"). For passive verbs, the main verb is in the past participle form, giving "I have been taught by Socrates" in the passive present perfect simple form but two forms of "to be" are used for the continuous: "has been being taught," "The student has been being taught Latin", rendering the perfect continuous or progressive in the passive voice largely meaningless in English. Note the auxiliary form of “to have” always precedes the form of "to be" in perfect tenses when using the continuous aspect.
The perfect, the progressive, and the perfect progressive are three of the aspect-like forms used in English. The perfective, imperfective, completive, inceptive, punctual, iterative, and habitual are sometimes considered aspects in English as well.
The tense of the verb "to have" dictates the time of the consequences but not of the action. For example, in the sentence "I have written a novel," the novel is clearly finished at present: the present tense of the verb "to have" indicates that the consequences -- the state of being an author with a completed novel—are in the present tense, even though the authorship is in the past tense. It may mean, “I am (now) finished with the novel” or it may answer the question “Have you ever written a novel?” “I have written a novel” may have a different meaning from “I wrote a novel”; the novel might have been written in the recent past.Present Perfect. Guide to Grammar and Writing. For this reason, it is not possible to write, “I have written a novel yesterday.” The sentence “She has come” is likely to mean, “She is here now,” but “She came” does not.
The use of the present perfect rather than the simple past tense can suggest other consequences. The sentence “I have written novels for five years” implies that the person is still writing novels whereas the sentence “I wrote novels for five years” implies that the person has stopped writing novels. The sentence “Have you been to the fair?” suggests that the fair is still going on, while the sentence “Did you go to the fair?” suggests that the fair is over.
The present tense form in the progressive shows that the action began some time ago but is continuing: "I have been working on a new novel for two years." By contrast, the past progressive tense ("I was writing a novel") may connote that an action was interrupted ("I was writing a novel until the telephone rang"); this connotation can also carry over into the pluperfect progressive tense ("I had been writing a novel when she walked in the room to talk to me").
The past perfect (or the pluperfect) has sometimes been called the past-in-the-past. It can be used to refer to one past event that occurred before another past event. For example, “The girl had eaten the cookie before she ate her lunch.” Both the girl’s eating the cookie and the girl’s eating lunch were events in the past, but the former happened before the latter.
Outside the indicative mood, the perfect has only a limited proper existence. Because the English modal verb
s are largely defective, and because the English subjunctive mood
by itself does not form a true preterite
, the verb "to have" is often used to construct past tenses. “To have” forms the contrary-to-fact past conditional. For example, “She can do it if she tries” and “She could do it if she tried” are both conditionals in the present tense; “She could have done it if she had tried” is the past conditional. When forming contrary-to-fact conditionals, English uses verb forms that are one step back in time. For example, the present conditional uses the past tense verbs: “If she had the book, she would read it right now.” The pluperfect (referred to as the past-in-the-past) is one step back in time after the simple past tense and is used for the past conditional: “If she had had the book, she would have read it immediately.” These verbs might not be considered to be truly in the perfect.
“To have” is used for the past tense of epistemic modals. For example, “He cannot be a genius” and “He could not be a genius” are both in the present tense. “He could not have been a genius” is in the past tense. This use of epistemic modals might not be considered to be truly in the perfect. The auxiliary verb “must” does not have a past tense form in modern English, and “to have” can be used for its epistemic meaning (for inferences): “He must have been at least seventy years old.” It is interesting to note that “must have” cannot be used for obligation or prohibition. A sentence such as “He might have worked here five years so far” can be rewritten as “Perhaps he has worked here for five years so far” and is considered a true perfect form by some linguists but not others.
indicates an action with a permanent result. It has narrower usage than the English perfect.
The effect of the action is seen in the resulting state. The state may belong to either the subject or the object.
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, the perfect (abbreviated or ), occasionally called the retrospective to avoid confusion with the perfective aspect
Perfective aspect
The perfective aspect , sometimes called the aoristic aspect, is a grammatical aspect used to describe a situation viewed as a simple whole, whether that situation occurs in the past, present, or future. The perfective aspect is equivalent to the aspectual component of past perfective forms...
, is a combination of aspect
Grammatical aspect
In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...
and tense
Tense
Tense may refer to:*Grammatical tense, a temporal linguistic quality expressing the time at, during, or over which a state or action denoted by a verb occurs...
that calls a listener's attention to the consequences, at some time of perspective (time of reference), generated by a prior situation, rather than just to the situation itself. The time of perspective itself is given by the tense of the helping verb, and usually the tense and the aspect are combined into a single tense-aspect form: the present perfect, the past perfect (also known as the pluperfect), or the future perfect
Future Perfect
-Album Credits:*Produced by T-Bone Burnett*All Songs Written by Autolux*Engineered by Mike Piersante*Mixed by Dave Sardy*Mastered by Stephen Marcussen *Artwork by Carla Azar-Vinyl releases:...
.
The perfect is distinct from the perfective, which marks a situation as a single event, without internal structure. A sentence in the perfective aspect cannot be in the perfect and vice versa (except in Modern Greek and Bulgarian).
The perfect can refer to events in the past that have been finished (such as “He has already eaten dinner”) as well as events that are ongoing (such as “He had been working on this novel for a year” or “He has composed operas for twenty years”); all are characterized by continued relevance to the speaker at the time of perspective.
The perfect contrasts with the prospective
Prospective aspect
In linguistics, the prospective aspect is a grammatical aspect describing an event that occurs subsequent to a given reference time. One way to view tenses in English and many other languages is as a combination of a reference time in which a situation takes place, and the time of a particular...
, which encodes the present relevance or anticipation of a future event. While the perfect is a relatively uniform category cross-linguistically, its relation to the experiential and resultative
Resultative
A resultative is a phrase that indicates the state of a noun resulting from the completion of the verb. In the English examples below, the affected noun is shown in bold and the resulting predicate is in italics:...
aspects is complex — the latter two are not simply restricted cases of the perfect.
English
The perfect is formed in English by conjugating the auxiliary verbAuxiliary verb
In linguistics, an auxiliary verb is a verb that gives further semantic or syntactic information about a main or full verb. In English, the extra meaning provided by an auxiliary verb alters the basic meaning of the main verb to make it have one or more of the following functions: passive voice,...
"to have" and then appending the verb's past participle
Participle
In linguistics, a participle is a word that shares some characteristics of both verbs and adjectives. It can be used in compound verb tenses or voices , or as a modifier...
form. Verbs in the perfect can be in the active or passive voice
English passive voice
The passive voice is a grammatical construction in which the subject of a sentence or clause denotes the recipient of the action rather than the performer...
. Active verbs combine "to have" and the past participle form of the main verb ("have done," "They have done so much work"). Passive verbs in the perfect require two past participle verb forms: "been" (the past participle of "to be") and the past participle of the main verb ("has been seen," "He has been seen by the doctor").
The conjugation of the verb "to have" determines the tense of the overall construction: 1) "have" and "has" in the present perfect, 2) "had" in the past perfect, and 3) "will have" and "shall have" in the future perfect.
- Present perfect: "The girl has eaten the cookie."
- Past perfect: "The girl had eaten the cookie before she ate her lunch."
- Future perfect: "The girl will have eaten the cookie by this afternoon."
The perfect can be combined with the progressive aspect
Continuous and progressive aspects
The continuous and progressive aspects are grammatical aspects that express incomplete action in progress at a specific time: they are non-habitual, imperfective aspects. It is a verb category with two principal meaning components: duration and incompletion...
, a type of imperfective aspect
Imperfective aspect
The imperfective is a grammatical aspect used to describe a situation viewed with internal structure, such as ongoing, habitual, repeated, and similar semantic roles, whether that situation occurs in the past, present, or future...
. In the progressive aspect, the verb "to be" is in the past participle form ("been"), while the main verb is in the present participle form ("has been teaching," "She has been teaching for ten years"). For passive verbs, the main verb is in the past participle form, giving "I have been taught by Socrates" in the passive present perfect simple form but two forms of "to be" are used for the continuous: "has been being taught," "The student has been being taught Latin", rendering the perfect continuous or progressive in the passive voice largely meaningless in English. Note the auxiliary form of “to have” always precedes the form of "to be" in perfect tenses when using the continuous aspect.
The perfect, the progressive, and the perfect progressive are three of the aspect-like forms used in English. The perfective, imperfective, completive, inceptive, punctual, iterative, and habitual are sometimes considered aspects in English as well.
The tense of the verb "to have" dictates the time of the consequences but not of the action. For example, in the sentence "I have written a novel," the novel is clearly finished at present: the present tense of the verb "to have" indicates that the consequences -- the state of being an author with a completed novel—are in the present tense, even though the authorship is in the past tense. It may mean, “I am (now) finished with the novel” or it may answer the question “Have you ever written a novel?” “I have written a novel” may have a different meaning from “I wrote a novel”; the novel might have been written in the recent past.Present Perfect. Guide to Grammar and Writing. For this reason, it is not possible to write, “I have written a novel yesterday.” The sentence “She has come” is likely to mean, “She is here now,” but “She came” does not.
The use of the present perfect rather than the simple past tense can suggest other consequences. The sentence “I have written novels for five years” implies that the person is still writing novels whereas the sentence “I wrote novels for five years” implies that the person has stopped writing novels. The sentence “Have you been to the fair?” suggests that the fair is still going on, while the sentence “Did you go to the fair?” suggests that the fair is over.
The present tense form in the progressive shows that the action began some time ago but is continuing: "I have been working on a new novel for two years." By contrast, the past progressive tense ("I was writing a novel") may connote that an action was interrupted ("I was writing a novel until the telephone rang"); this connotation can also carry over into the pluperfect progressive tense ("I had been writing a novel when she walked in the room to talk to me").
The past perfect (or the pluperfect) has sometimes been called the past-in-the-past. It can be used to refer to one past event that occurred before another past event. For example, “The girl had eaten the cookie before she ate her lunch.” Both the girl’s eating the cookie and the girl’s eating lunch were events in the past, but the former happened before the latter.
Outside the indicative mood, the perfect has only a limited proper existence. Because the English modal verb
Modal verb
A modal verb is a type of auxiliary verb that is used to indicate modality -- that is, likelihood, ability, permission, and obligation...
s are largely defective, and because the English subjunctive mood
Subjunctive mood
In grammar, the subjunctive mood is a verb mood typically used in subordinate clauses to express various states of irreality such as wish, emotion, possibility, judgment, opinion, necessity, or action that has not yet occurred....
by itself does not form a true preterite
Preterite
The preterite is the grammatical tense expressing actions that took place or were completed in the past...
, the verb "to have" is often used to construct past tenses. “To have” forms the contrary-to-fact past conditional. For example, “She can do it if she tries” and “She could do it if she tried” are both conditionals in the present tense; “She could have done it if she had tried” is the past conditional. When forming contrary-to-fact conditionals, English uses verb forms that are one step back in time. For example, the present conditional uses the past tense verbs: “If she had the book, she would read it right now.” The pluperfect (referred to as the past-in-the-past) is one step back in time after the simple past tense and is used for the past conditional: “If she had had the book, she would have read it immediately.” These verbs might not be considered to be truly in the perfect.
“To have” is used for the past tense of epistemic modals. For example, “He cannot be a genius” and “He could not be a genius” are both in the present tense. “He could not have been a genius” is in the past tense. This use of epistemic modals might not be considered to be truly in the perfect. The auxiliary verb “must” does not have a past tense form in modern English, and “to have” can be used for its epistemic meaning (for inferences): “He must have been at least seventy years old.” It is interesting to note that “must have” cannot be used for obligation or prohibition. A sentence such as “He might have worked here five years so far” can be rewritten as “Perhaps he has worked here for five years so far” and is considered a true perfect form by some linguists but not others.
Ancient Greek
The perfect aspect in Ancient GreekAncient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
indicates an action with a permanent result. It has narrower usage than the English perfect.
The effect of the action is seen in the resulting state. The state may belong to either the subject or the object.
See also
- Ancient Greek grammar: Dependence of moods and tenses
- Future tenseFuture tenseIn grammar, a future tense is a verb form that marks the event described by the verb as not having happened yet, but expected to happen in the future , or to happen subsequent to some other event, whether that is past, present, or future .-Expressions of future tense:The concept of the future,...
- Grammatical aspectGrammatical aspectIn linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...
- Grammatical tenseGrammatical tenseA tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...
- Imperfect
- Past tensePast tenseThe past tense is a grammatical tense that places an action or situation in the past of the current moment , or prior to some specified time that may be in the speaker's past, present, or future...
- Perfective aspectPerfective aspectThe perfective aspect , sometimes called the aoristic aspect, is a grammatical aspect used to describe a situation viewed as a simple whole, whether that situation occurs in the past, present, or future. The perfective aspect is equivalent to the aspectual component of past perfective forms...
- Prophetic perfect tenseProphetic perfect tenseThe prophetic perfect tense is a verb tense that some claim is used by the prophets in the Hebrew Bible. This literary technique refers to future events in the past tense, known as deictic center shift...
External links
- 6 Perfect Tenses Explained + Exercises
- Grammar Tutorials - a column overview of the English tenses
- Greek tenses