Tenses!!!

[spelling]

Hello sir,

I am studying tenses through English Page.com.  They have some nice exercises.  The Tenses are driving me insane!!!  I need to ask the following:

1.  In the sentence: "My best friend and I have known each other for over fifteen years.  We still get together once a week."  Does 'have known" indicate Present Perfect? On English Page`s site, under Present Perfect - it says that you cannot use the PP with specific time expressions.  So, fifteen years is a time expression?? If this sentence is in the PP, then under which usage heading on the English Page - Present Perfect - does it fall?

2.  "Stinson is a fantastic writer.  He has written ten very creative short stories in the last year.  One day, he'll be as fabous as Hemingway."  Has written - is it Present Perfect? Because according to the sentence he is expected to write more stories? So, on English Page, under PP, it will fall under the heading - An uncompleted action you are expecting?

3.  "I have not had this much fun since I was a kid." Present Perfect? For the same reason as sentence 2?

Thank you,
Annelize

[Joe Carillo]

Let’s analyze the tenses of the sentence constructions in the EnglishPage.com webpage that are bothering you:

1. “My best friend and I have known each other for over fifteen years. We still get together once a week.”

The first sentence in the construction above is indeed in the present perfect. It is in the present perfect because the verb phrase “have known each other” conveys the idea that the action has subsisted or continued up to the moment of speaking, and the adverbial modifier “for over fifteen years” is actually not a specific time of occurrence of the action—this is the element that shouldn’t be in the present perfect form—but a period or duration. In contrast, when the time of occurrence of the action is specified (“yesterday,” “last week,” or “five years ago,” etc.), what’s needed is the simple past tense instead, as in this sentence: “My best friend and I first met in a bookstore five years ago.” Of course, when an action or condition has subsisted since five years ago up to the present, the present perfect is called for, as in this sentence: “Clara and I have been friends since we met in a bookstore five years ago.”

2. “Stinson is a fantastic writer. He has written ten very creative short stories in the last year.  One day, he’ll be as famous as Hemingway.”

I think the tense of the second sentence above is faulty. Since the action of writing the ten very creative short stories took place in a definite time in the past (“last year”), it shouldn’t be in the present perfect “has written” but in the simple past tense “wrote” instead, as follows: “He wrote ten very creative short stories last year.” This should be the case even if the writing of the stories was spread out over the entire year; the important consideration for establishing the tense here is that all of the writing is now over for those ten short stories.

That statement should therefore be corrected to read as follows:

“Stinson is a fantastic writer. He wrote ten very creative short stories last year. One day, he’ll be as famous as Hemingway.”

Alternatively, we can use the present perfect instead for that statement in a construction like the following:

“Stinson is a fantastic writer who has written ten very creative short stories, doing them last year over a period of only twelve months. One day, he’ll be as famous as Hemingway.”

The use of the present perfect is called for only if the action in the sentence has continued from some time in the past up to the present or at the moment of speaking. An expectation expressed in a separate sentence that action will or might continue in the future—in this particular case, the writing of more short stories to the point of the writer probably becoming “as famous as Hemingway”—has nothing or little to do with the determination of the tense in a preceding sentence. Generally, the tense to use in a particular sentence is independently determined on the basis of the verb describing the action, the time of its occurrence, and the duration of that action. So as not to confuse the reader, however, the good writer sees to it that the proper sequence of tenses in a narrative or exposition is scrupulously observed. (Click this link in the Forum for a discussion of “How to use the normal sequence-of-tenses rule for reported speech.”)

3. “I have not had this much fun since I was a kid.”

The sentence above is clearly in the negative form of the present perfect, describing a situation that has not happened from the time that the speaker was a child up to the present or the moment of speaking, when it finally did happen. It may come as a surprise to some, but the operative verb phrase in that sentence is “have had fun,” with “not” and “this much” as its adverbial modifiers. The main verb in that phrase is actually “had,” which is the past participle of “have,” which then uses the auxiliary verb “have” to form the present perfect “have had.”

And in answer to your last question, yes, Sentence 3 here is in the present perfect for the same reason as Sentence 2—except that Sentence 3 is in the negative sense of the present perfect while Sentence 2 is in its usual positive sense.

[Mwita Chacha]

I have understood that the problem generated by 'in the last year' in ''He has written ten very creative short stories in the last year'' is merely from the standpoint of semantics, not grammar. That is, since the writing of those stories appears to be a completed action that took place over the last 12 months, the perfect tense is evidently not called for. I hope same problem will not be caused by 'in the last week' in the following construction: ''I have done a great deal of office work in the last week assigned to me by my bosses. I expect I will have finished all my assignments by Tuesday.'' The sentences clearly show that my doing of work is an action that was started in the past, continues in the present, and will be over some day in the future.
Also, I have to sort of say the rule present perfect is only called for if the action in a sentence has continued from the past up to the present is not cast in stone. For instance, someone who phoned his friend three hours ago may tell another person ''I have been talking to my friend on the telephone and he says he will pay us a visit next summer.'' The sentence has used a perfect progressive tense even though its action was completed some time back and therefore doesn't continue at the moment of speaking. So it seems insufficient to define the use of perfect tenses by basing on one explanation only.

[Joe Carillo]

Your use of the present perfect in the first sentence below is incorrect:

“I have done a great deal of office work in the last week assigned to me by my bosses.”

The time when the great deal of office work was done, “in the last week,” is in an indefinite time in the past; what’s called for in that first sentence then is the past perfect, as follows:

“I had done a great deal of office work in the last week assigned to me by my bosses.”

Your use of the future perfect in the second sentence of the statement is correct, but it’s a tad too formal and unidiomatic:

“I expect I will have finished all my assignments by Tuesday.”

When talking about expected outcomes, using the “the verb ‘expect’ + infinitive form of the verb” is better and more idiomatic:

“I expect to finish all my assignments by Tuesday.”

The full statement should then read as follows:

“I had done a great deal of office work in the last week assigned to me by my bosses. I expect to finish all my assignments by Tuesday.”

But I’m sure that foremost in your mind is this question: Can we use the present perfect ever in such situations?

The answer is yes, but we must phrase the sentence such that it’s unmistakable that the action did continue from the past up to the present or the moment of speaking. For instance, by using the time frame as “this last week” to indicate that the week isn’t over yet, we can recast the sentence using the present perfect as follows:

“This last week, I have done a great deal of office work assigned to me by my bosses. I expect to finish all my assignments by Tuesday.”

As to your second point, you are correct that the present perfect can be used not only when the action in a sentence has continued from the past up to the present. In fact, there’s not one but six distinct timelines for the present perfect, as follows:

(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.”

Check out these previous readings in the Forum for detailed discussions on the present perfect tense:
 
The perfect tenses are my “major, major” English grammar setback (February 7, 2011)

How the perfect tenses situate events as they unfold in time (February 20, 2011)

[Mwita Chacha]

You say ''in the last week'' is an indefinite time in the past and therefore it needs a past perfect tense, not present. But my understanding of the use of present perfect in sentences is that such constructions should indeed be used with expressions of indefinite time in the past or of time continuing to present moment. The second thing is exactly what 'in the last week' doing in that sentence; that is, it expresses the duration of the past seven days counted back from the minute of talking.
The past-perfect sentence you've given as a substitute for my present-perfect sentence is the one that seems to violate perfect-tense sentences construction regulations. Past perfect tenses, among other applications, chiefly are used in sentences expressing an action completed before another action in the past, as in ''I had never been to New York before I visited there last month'' or in ''Riz Khan had worked with CNN for 10 years before he moved to Al Jazeera.''
In short, if we find a reason to regard ''I have done...in the last week'' as imperfect, I don't see how ''I had done...in the last week'' could be considered perfect judging by the same reason.

[Joe Carillo]

Let’s analyze the sentence you presented even more closely:

“I have done a great deal of office work in the last week assigned to me by my bosses.”

You say that the phrase “in the last week” expresses the duration of the past seven days counted back from the minute of talking, and that it’s the meaning you intended for that phrase in that sentence. The problem, however, is that a reader of that sentence other than yourself can get the sense that you meant the whole prepositional phrase “in the last week assigned to me by my bosses” to be not the “the past seven days counted back from the minute of talking,” but to be any last week at some indefinite time in the past when office work was assigned to the speaker by the boss. You can get a better sense of the possibility of this alternative interpretation of that time frame by putting that whole prepositional phrase up front, as follows:

“In the last week assigned to me by my bosses, I have done a great deal of office work.”

Clearly, the sense of the time frame in the above sentence is any last week in the indefinite past, and that it was the week itself that was assigned to the speaker by the boss, not necessarily the office work the speaker did during that last week. This being the case, we have a speaker talking about two actions that happened in the indefinite past—a situation that calls for the past perfect tense, as follows:

“In the last week assigned to me by my bosses, I had done a great deal of office work.”

If the speaker meant the time frame to be “the past seven days counted back from the minute of talking,” the precise and grammatically correct way to capture that sense is to use the phrase “this past week”—meaning up to the time of speaking—and reconstruct the sentence in the present perfect as follows:

“This past week, I have done a great deal of office work assigned to me by my bosses.”

On the other hand, if the speaker meant to say that the week was already over for some time before the time of speaking, the precise and grammatically correct way to capture that sense is to use the phrase “during the past week”—meaning the week is already over—and reconstruct the sentence in the simple past tense:

“During the past week, I did a great deal of office work assigned to me by my bosses.”   

Now let’s take a look at your original sentence again:

“I have done a great deal of office work in the last week assigned to me by my bosses.”

In that construction, neither the present perfect nor the simple past tense would apply because of the peculiar phrasing and of the rather awkward position of the prepositional phrase “in the last week assigned to me by my bosses” in the sentence—altogether indicating two actions in the indefinite past. This is why I suggested the use of the past perfect instead, as follows:

“I had done a great deal of office work in the last week assigned to me by my bosses.”

or, to put the prepositional phrase up front simply for comparison with the previous reconstructions in the same vein:

“In the last week assigned to me by my bosses, I had done a great deal of office work.”

We can see from the above analysis that the tense of the verb in a sentence is greatly influenced by precisely how the sentence is constructed, not just by the sense intended by the writer in his or her mind. And very often, a simple tweak in the phrasing of the time frame of the action can change the tense of the verbs in the sentence altogether.

As to the usage of the past perfect tense, you are correct in saying that it is chiefly used in sentences expressing an action completed before another action in the past, as in these examples you presented: “I had never been to New York before I visited there last month” and “Riz Khan had worked with CNN for 10 years before he moved to Al Jazeera.” I must quickly add though that in news journalism, the past perfect tense is as commonly used when the exact time of occurrence of a particular past action is not specified, as in the following examples:

“The Berlin Wall had fallen.” (As opposed to the past tense “The Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989.”)

“The stock price of Facebook had dropped precipitously.” (Precisely when isn’t specified)

[starseo38]

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