Last week, in a posting entitled
“The perfect tenses as a major English grammar setback” in the You Asked Me This Question section, I discussed the usage of the verbal auxiliaries “has,” “have,” and “had” in the formation of the present perfect, past perfect, and future tenses. This was to help dispel the confusion of Forum member Miss Mae, who wrote to tell me that having remained unsure of the usage of the verbal auxiliaries since her college days, she’d try every grammatical strategy she knew just to avoid using them.
The discussions in last week’s posting focused on how, in tandem with the past participle of a verb, the auxiliary verb “have” inflects or changes into the forms “has” or “had” or pairs off with the auxiliary verb “will” to denote the present perfect, past perfect, or future perfect. Not covered in the discussions was precisely when a sentence should be constructed in a particular perfect tense and what the specific timelines are for each of the three perfect tenses.
In my essay below that also came out in my English-usage column in
The Manila Times today, I discuss those timelines for the perfect tenses along with the various ways that these tenses can be used to describe events and occurrences as they unfold in time. I trust that these discussions will be a welcome review for those who need to fortify their mastery of this very important aspect of English grammar. (February 19, 2011)
The specific timelines for the perfect tensesLast week, to help dispel a reader’s lingering confusion over their usage, I discussed the role of the auxiliary verbs “has,” “have,” and “had” in forming the present perfect, past perfect, and future perfect tenses. Now I’ll discuss the specific timelines for the perfect tenses to show how these auxiliary verbs actually work to denote them.
The present perfect. This tense, which uses the auxiliary verb “has” (singular) or “have” (plural) with the past participle of the verb, works in at least six ways to define events and occurrences as they unfold in time:
(1) To express a state or condition that began in the past and leads up to the present: “The accomplices
have kept their vow of silence for decades.”
(2) To express habitual or continued action: “She
has worn anklets since she was ten.”
(3) To indicate events occurring at an indefinite time in the past (used with the adverbs “ever,” “never,” and “before”): “Some people
have never gone to college due to poverty.”
(4) To indicate that an action happened only recently (used with the adverb “just”): “My brother
has just finished college.”
(5) To indicate that an action happened more than once, but it’s not important or necessary to know exactly when: “She
has seen that movie
a dozen times.”
(6) To indicate that something that happened in the past continues to influence the present: “The El Niño phenomenon
has altered weather patterns very seriously. “
The past perfect. This tense, which uses the auxiliary verb “had” with the past participle, is used to describe (1) an action completed before another past event, and (2) an action that began and ended at some unspecified time in the past.
In case 1, the past perfect component is paired off with at least one other past action in the simple past tense, as in “Rowena
had left to work in Dubai when her scholarship
was approved.” Note that this past perfect sentence consists of two separate actions, one in the past perfect and the other in the simple past.
In case 2, the present perfect doesn’t require the explicit use of another action completed before another past event, as in “Rowena
had left” and “ The heavy rains
had lasted a month.” In such past perfect sentences, precisely when the action took place is unspecified or unknown. When it is known, the sentence takes the simple past tense, as in “Rowena
left yesterday” and “The heavy rains
stopped last night.”
The future perfect. This tense, which pairs off the past participle with the auxiliary verbs “will” and “have,” is used in sentences that consist of an action that continues into the future and another action or point of time—expressed in the simple present tense—in which the action culminates or ends. There are four possible scenarios for this:
(1) A future action that will be completed before another time or event in the future, as in “I
will have taken the board examinations
by 2012.”
(2) An action or condition that will continue up to a certain point in the future, as in “The nurse
will have worked in Bahrain for six years
by the time she retires.” Take note that in such sentences, an existing condition remains unchanged until a specific future time.
(3) A future event that will occur before a specific time or action in the future. “
By the time the irrigation project is completed, its original cost estimate
will have ballooned almost five times.”
(4) A future event whose completion is more important than how long it will take to complete it. “
By the time she finishes high school, her parents
will have spent a little fortune for her tuition fees.” This use of the future perfect dramatizes the importance of the end-point or result of a process rather than the process itself. (February 19, 2011)
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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times
, February 19, 2011 © 2011 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
