Four perplexing questions about the usage of the English tenses

[Joe Carillo]

From an English-language learner whom I’ll identify only as Mark Kenneth (December 15, 2009):

Good evening po, sir. My name is Mark Kenneth. I’m 31 years old. And it’s painful for me to admit that at this age, I am not a master of anything. Not even of the English language.

I’m scared about my future. And I regret a lot. But now I want to TRY…and see kung ano pa sa mga pangarap ko ang pwede ko pang makamit.

I bought your book…and may ilang mga tanong po ako na ang hirap hanapan ng answers.

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Here are my questions po:

1. “Yesterday, I went to the doctor and he told me that I HAVE/HAD cancer.”

I am not sure kung ang dapat gamitin ay “HAVE” (since logically kung na-diagnose ako with cancer kahapon lang… naturally… may cancer pa rin ako ngayon), or “HAD” (since my conversation with the doctor happened in the past and I used “went”).

2. “I woke up this morning thinking that today IS/WAS Monday.” (Let’s assume that today is any other day but MONDAY)
 
3. On this scenario, kunwari narinig ko sa radio (5 minutes ago) na namimigay sila ng tickets for a concert. Tumawag agad ako sa radio station and how would I say the ff:

“Hi, I heard you ARE/WERE giving away tickets for the concert.”

(Logically po they are still giving away tickets nung tumawag ako... but should I use “were” since narinig ko yung announcement in the past)

4. “Yesterday, she told me her name was/is RODA.” (Ang true name nya po talaga ay Roda
 
Sir, it will mean a lot kung mag-re-reply po kayo sa akin. Gusto ko lang po makuha yung explanation behind the correct answers.

I’m saving up money para mabili ko yung second book nyo.

And, sir, ano po ba ang mga libro kong dapat basahin that can help me about those questions?

Maraming maraming salamat po. God bless you and your family!

My reply to Mark Kenneth:

December 15, 2009

Dear Mark Kenneth:

Here are the grammatically correct ways of constructing the sentences you presented:

1. “Yesterday, I went to the doctor and he told me that I have/had cancer.”

The present perfect “have cancer” instead of the past perfect “had cancer” has to be used in that sentence, as follows:

“Yesterday, I went to the doctor and he told me that I have cancer.”

This is because although the diagnosis was made yesterday (past tense), the condition of the patient (the speaker) being sick of cancer continues or persists up to the present (present perfect).

By definition, the present perfect tense, which is formed in English with the auxiliary verb “have,” expresses an action or state completed at the time of speaking or a condition that continues or persists up to the present.

Examples:
(a) Present perfect tense expressing an action or state completed at the time of speaking:

“I have finished my job.”

(b) Present perfect tense expressing a condition that continues or persists up to the present:

“I have a bad cold.” “She has a bad cold.” “We have a bad cold.”

The sentence you presented is actually a compound-complex sentence consisting of two coordinate clauses linked by the coordinating conjunction “and.” The first clause is “I went to the doctor” (past tense) and the second, “he told me that I have cancer” (a complex clause because it consists of a statement in the past tense—“He told me”—and a relative clause in the present perfect tense—“that I have cancer”). The word “yesterday” is an adverb of time that modifies the entire sentence that follows it.

In contrast, the past perfect tense, which is formed in English with the auxiliary verb “had,” denotes an action or state as completed at or before a past time spoken of. A sentence that uses the past perfect tense usually is constructed with another clause indicating a time reference that is one tense forward in time.

Example:
“I was absent last week because I had a bad cold.”
         past tense                              past perfect tense

In this sentence, the speaker was absent that previous week due to a bad cold but what is said implies that he or she no longer has that bad cold. This is the essence of the past perfect tense.

If the speaker still has that bad cold, though, she would likely say this:

“I was absent last week because I had a bad cold.
I want to extend my sick leave because I still have that bad cold.”
   present tense                                    present perfect   

2. “I woke up this morning thinking that today IS/WAS Monday.” (Let’s assume that today is any other day but MONDAY)

That sentence should use the past tense form “was Monday” in the relative clause, as follows:

“I woke up this morning thinking that today was Monday.”

The past tense “was Monday” has to be used here because the speaker obviously has already realized that he was wrong in thinking that today is a Monday. In other words, in that complex sentence, both the action (“woke up”) and the state described (“today was Monday”) are in the past tense.

3. Regarding this scenario that you presented:

Kunwari narinig ko sa radio (5 minutes ago) na namimigay sila ng tickets for a concert. Tumawag agad ako sa radio station and how would I say the ff:

 “Hi, I heard you ARE/WERE giving away tickets for the concert.”

(Logically po they are still giving away tickets nung tumawag ako... but should I use “were” since narinig ko yung announcement in the past?)   

My answer:
The sentence in question should use the present tense “are giving away tickets,” as follows:

“Hi, I heard you are giving away tickets for the concert.”

Here, from the standpoint of the speaker, it has to be presumed that he or she thinks that the radio station is still giving away tickets for the concert; otherwise, there’s no point for him or her to call that radio station to indicate interest in getting tickets. It would be different, though, if the speaker indicated a time frame in the past for the giving away of tickets, say, “yesterday.” In that case, it would be mandatory to use the past tense “you were giving away tickets,” as follows:

   “Hi, I heard that yesterday, you were giving away tickets for the concert.”

Another thing to keep in mind: The sentence construction “Hi, I heard you are giving away tickets for the concert” is actually the ellipted form (reduced and streamlined) of the complex sentence “Hi, I heard that you are giving away tickets for the concert.” Here, we have the main clause “I heard” and the subordinate clause “you are giving away tickets for the concert,” but the subordinating conjunction “that” linking them has been dropped. Ellipsis is one of the ways that English sentences can be made more concise and easier to articulate.

4. “Yesterday, she told me her name WAS/IS Roda.” (Ang true name nya po talaga ay Roda)

That sentence should use the present tense form “is Roda,” as follows:

“Yesterday, she told me her name is Roda.”

The present tense “is Roda” has to be used here because the fact that the subject’s name is “Roda” has been validated to be true and remains true up to the time of speaking. It would be different, of course, if it turned out that her name really wasn’t Roda, say, it’s “Dora” instead.

“Yesterday, she told me her name was Roda, but it turns out it really is Dora.”

Again, it must be kept in mind that this sentence is the ellipted form of the compound-complex sentence below, where both relative pronouns “that” have been dropped for conciseness and easier articulation:

“Yesterday, she told me that her name was Roda, but it turns out that it really is Dora.”
           
I hope that this has clarified the correct usage for the four sentences you presented.

You say that you already have my first book, English Plain and Simple. That’s great! Once you have saved enough money to get a copy of my third book, Give Your English the Winning Edge, and perhaps also of my second book, The 10 Most Annoying English Grammar Errors, it’s unlikely that you’d need other grammar books to help you find answers to questions like the ones we have just taken up. Nevertheless, for greater mastery of English, keep on reading good English-language books and periodicals and keep on listening to good English-language TV and radio programs as well.   

Merry Christmas!

Joe Carillo

[madgirl09]

Hello Sir Joe....I just want to quickly call your attention to the discussion you had on "past perfect and present perfect". I think you just overlooked some of the "confusing" examples.

Here are some of the explanations you used. I'm printing them bold.

Here are the grammatically correct ways of constructing the sentences you presented:

1. “Yesterday, I went to the doctor and he told me that I have/had cancer.”

The present perfect “have cancer” instead of the past perfect “had cancer” has to be used in that sentence, as follows:

“Yesterday, I went to the doctor and he told me that I have cancer.”

"Have cancer" is not in the present perfect aspect, as "cancer" is a noun/direct object, and not a verb in the past participle form. The present perfect form of any verb is formed by adding an auxiliary verb has or have to the past participle form of the verb.....which is missing in the original sentence. The inquirer's original sentence was just in the simple past tense, not perfect aspect form.


By definition, the present perfect tense, which is formed in English with the auxiliary verb “have,” expresses an action or state completed at the time of speaking or a condition that continues or persists up to the present.Examples:
(a) Present perfect tense expressing an action or state completed at the time of speaking:

“I have finished my job.”

Correct! But you did not show a similar present perfect example to the inquirer's case.

(b) Present perfect tense expressing a condition that continues or persists up to the present:

“I have a bad cold.” “She has a bad cold.” “We have a bad cold.”T

These are simply present simple tense (habitual) examples, not present perfect forms, observing the S-TV-DO sentence pattern. The "have" in each sentence is the main verb not an auxiliary verb, as it does not help or assist any verb present in the sentence. The present perfect aspect talks about an action that has been completed (I have had that H1N1 flu. I am already immune to it.). Any indication of a continuing perfect aspect (starting in the past and continuing at present) could be expressed through the present perfect progressive aspect: I have been suffering from swine flu for two weeks now.


In contrast, the past perfect tense, which is formed in English with the auxiliary verb “had,” denotes an action or state as completed at or before a past time spoken of. A sentence that uses the past perfect tense usually is constructed with another clause indicating a time reference that is one tense forward in time.

Example:
“I was absent last week because I had a bad cold.”
         past tense                              past perfect tense

Correct definition, but wrong sentence example.
It could be: "I was absent last week because I had had a bad cold."

Going over the rest of the examples, I realized that you chose the wrong set of rules to discuss. The original questions of the inquirer merely touched on rules governing "sequence of tense" in reported speech.  IMHO IMHO IMHO
The rules discussed must be about "reported speech" and tenses in reported speech not present perfect or past perfect aspect rules. Hello, Sir Joe! Merry Christmas!

[Joe Carillo]

My profuse apologies to madgirl09 for this belated reply to her urgent corrections to my grammar advice to Mark Kenneth. As I was telling maxsims two hours ago elsewhere in the Forum, I have been away from my workplace and my computer for a full 36 hours—the longest time that I haven’t been able to attend to the Forum since it started in May this year. This is because right after I composed my advice to Mark Kenneth and posted it on the fly early evening of Tuesday, I fell asleep like a log and, very early the following morning, went into a frenzy of preparations for going to the Manila Centennial Airport to join my brother and another sister in picking up our balikbayan sister from the United States. From that time onward until last night, my family and I had a long, uninterrupted December reunion with my brethren and their respective families. And as I was telling maxsims, it just went on and on and on until jet lag finally overcame our balikbayan sister—she’s a medical doctor on vacation from the United States—and the rest of us seniors had to leave the hotel to get back to work and the younger generation to get back to school.

So now, morning of the following day, I’m finally back at my workplace and laptop to belatedly address that posting of madgirl09…

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Madgirl09, I thank heaven that there are people like you who care enough about good English that they would take the trouble of correcting flaws in my usage arguments rather than just taking everything ex cathedra. I’m an old hand in the English grammar and usage game but I’m not perfect; in fact, as you pointed out in detail, I goofed miserably in my explanations to Mark Kenneth about his perplexing questions on the usage of the English tenses.

How do I explain such a monumental mistake in explaining something so basic as the perfect tenses? It’s probably because I worked myself to the bone last weekend, preparing for and conducting an English-usage lecture for a client in faraway Manila (imagine the mind-boggling Christmas traffic along EDSA and Roxas Boulevard!) and doing so many last-minute writing and errands afterwards. Another reason could be the early evening child-carolers with their off-key singing and jarring accompaniments using empty tin cans and cardboard horns. In hindsight, with all those distractions, I could see now that my brain must have been functioning so imperfectly that I mistook the various forms of the stand-alone verb “have” for the perfect tenses. So now I’ll have to patiently set the record and the English usage straight, taking into account your very penetrating observations about the four explanations I had given to Mark Kenneth.

Here's Kenneth’s sentence again with the two answer choices:

“Yesterday, I went to the doctor and he told me that I have/had cancer.”

1. The correct verb form is “have cancer” in the sense of continuing possession”:

The correct usage, and there’s no debate about it, is this: “Yesterday, I went to the doctor and he told me that I have cancer.”

I said in my advice to Mark Kenneth that the correct verb form for that sentence is “I have cancer” because although the diagnosis was made yesterday (past tense), the condition of the patient (the speaker) being sick of cancer continues or persists up to the present. However, as madgirl09 pointed out, I erred in calling this verb form the present perfect tense. It is, in fact, the present tense form of the verb “have” in the sense of “continuing possession.”

Madgirl09 is absolutely right in saying that the proper form for the present perfect tense is the auxiliary verb “have” or “has” followed by the past participle of the verb. This is the case in the sentence “She has taken her medicine.” In contrast, the verb form in Mark Kenneth’s sentence is the verb “have”—not as an auxiliary verb but a verb all by its own—followed by the noun “cancer” that serves as its direct object. This form isn't the present perfect at all, which expresses an action or state completed at the time of speaking, but the simple present tense of the verb “have” in the sense of “continuing possession.”

For the stand-alone verb “have,” in fact, the forms it takes in the difference tenses are as follows:

Present tense: “have,” as in “I have a bad cold.”
Past tense: “had,” as in “I had a bad cold.”
Future tense: “With this weather, I will have a bad cold.” (Idiomatically, though, people normally would say, “With this weather, I might catch a cold.”) 

So, if this really is the case, what was I thinking when I said that the present perfect was the correct form of the verb in this sentence from Mark Kenneth: “Yesterday, I went to the doctor and he told me that I have cancer”?

As I already said, I wasn’t thinking properly. I must have been so distracted and so in a rush that my reasoning powers went down to an all-time low. I therefore would like to apologize profusely for my erroneous explanation, and I hope that Forum readers will take madgirl09’s very competent correction as a heaven-sent peer review of my errant explanation to Mark Kenneth.

2. The correct forms and usage of the perfect tenses:

As madgirl09 pointed out, the verb form “have cancer” in Mark Kenneth’s sentence is actually in the present tense of “have” in the sense of continuing possession. That having been clarified, let me now clarify how the real present perfect tense works.

(a) The present perfect tense, which is formed in English with the auxiliary verb “have” followed by the past participle of the verb, expresses an action or state completed at the time of speaking.

Examples:
“I have finished my job.”
“She has finished her job.”
“They have finished their job.”

(b) The past perfect tense, which is formed in English with the auxiliary verb “had,” denotes an action or state as completed at or before a past time spoken of.

As I explained in my advice to Mark Kenneth, a sentence that uses the past perfect tense normally is constructed with another clause indicating a time reference that is one tense forward in time.

Examples:
“I had finished my job when my manager arrived.”
“She had finished her job when her manager arrived.”
“They had finished their job when their manager arrived.”

3. The present perfect progressive denotes action that started in the past and continues to the present:

I also erred in saying that the present perfect tense also denotes a condition that continues or persists up to the present. As madgirl09 correctly pointed out, “any indication of a continuing perfect aspect (starting in the past and continuing at present) could be expressed through the present perfect progressive aspect, as in “I have been suffering from swine flu for two weeks now.” As we can see, the form of the present perfect progressive is “have + been + progressive form of the verb.” (The progressive form, of course, is the verb with the suffix “-ing.”)

4. The simple present tense normally doesn’t denote habitual actions:

There are only two points in madgirl09’s posting that needs clarification.

First, she said that the verbs in the following sentences that I had presented are “simply present simple tense (habitual) examples.”

“I have a bad cold.” “She has a bad cold.” “We have a bad cold.”

The verbs in these sentences are indeed in the simple present tense, but they are not in the “habitual” form. They are simply in the present tense, period. The habitual form uses the form “used to + has/have + object,” as in the following examples:

“I used to have a bad cold.”
“She used to have a bad cold.”
“We used to have a dad cold.”

Second, madgirl09 presented the following sentence as an example of the past perfect:
“I was absent last week because I had had a bad cold.”

The subordinate clause in that sentence actually doesn’t need to be in the present perfect. The simple past tense will suffice:

“I was absent last week because I had a bad cold.”

The reason is that the sentence actually consists of the main clause “I was absent last week” and the subordinate clause “I had a bad clause” linked by the subordinating conjunction “because.” As such, both clauses need to be in the simple past tense. To use the past perfect “had had a bad cold” would wrongly indicate that that the person speaking no longer had the bad cold when he or she went absent. On the contrary, it’s clear that the speaker still had that cold when he or she went absent.

***

NOTE: So that my original erroneous explanation for the usage of the perfect tenses won’t confuse Forum members and viewers, I will be revising the posting of my advice to Mark Kenneth in the front page of the “You Asked Me This Question” section. The revision will incorporate the corrections presented by madgirl09 and the two points of clarification I made above. However, for its instructive value, I will retain my original flawed posting inside the Forum along with madgirl09’s posting correcting it. I do hope this would encourage other Forum members not to hesitate to correct me or other Forum members when misleading or erroneous statements are inadvertently made about English grammar or usage. We need to be sure that our grammar and usage pronouncements in this Forum are correct and aboveboard for posterity.

[madgirl09]

Hello Sir Joe! Welcome back! Hihihihi 

It's obvious that you were just so busy these past few days, and so just quickly copied and pasted some rules that didn't match the questions... out of your excitement to meet up with kins.    You don't have to keep a close watch on us every time...as we could party if you're not around, hehehe  . (right, max?)

I agree with all your comments and analysis of my sentence examples. My "had had" example didn't really make sense, haha, you noticed (As what's the reason for being absent when you no longer suffer from cold?. Actually, in Japan, even if you have hay fever or cold, you still have to go to work. Only swine flu or diarrhea could get you secluded, or sent home...due to sanitation, harharhar ).

Anyways, thanks that you are back to us, Sir. We can party again here (What souvenirs did you get from your sister?  )

Say guys, can we have Joe's Angels party next year? Sigh. We can't go home this Christmas  .

[hill roberts]

We forgive you, Joe. And you Madgirl must now be given 3 stars by our Professor. Yes, it's Christmas in the Philippines and how I miss that land of beauty and self-doubt. I'm stuck in Europe as if I were a prisoner without any recourse but to escape! No, it has nothing to do with my husband, hahaha, it has to do with his nasty infection he caught three months ago the size of two golf balls and although the infection is almost gone, he'd need a minor operation to remove that "capsule" that is straining his back...Hmmm, can't join you guys yet. I'm hoping someday, we could really get together and have a wonderful time exchanging pleasantries and timeless memories.
A very Happy Christmas and may 2010 be equally good--if not better, for all of us. Peace, prosperity, health and happiness! A toast from Europe!

[Joe Carillo]

Hello Sir Joe! Welcome back! Hihihihi 

It's obvious that you were just so busy these past few days, and so just quickly copied and pasted some rules that didn't match the questions... out of your excitement to meet up with kins.    You don't have to keep a close watch on us every time...as we could party if you're not around, hehehe  . (right, max?)

I agree with all your comments and analysis of my sentence examples. My "had had" example didn't really make sense, haha, you noticed (As what's the reason for being absent when you no longer suffer from cold?. Actually, in Japan, even if you have hay fever or cold, you still have to go to work. Only swine flu or diarrhea could get you secluded, or sent home...due to sanitation, harharhar ).

Anyways, thanks that you are back to us, Sir. We can party again here (What souvenirs did you get from your sister?  )

Say guys, can we have Joe's Angels party next year? Sigh. We can't go home this Christmas  .

Yes, madgirl09, I'm glad to be back on my desk in front of my laptop! But whether I'm around or not, you and Hill and maxsims are always welcome to party in the Forum. You see, I love watching people have a good time--preferably with all their inhibitions down!

No, honestly, I didn't just quickly copy and paste those rules in my advice to Mark Kenneth. I relied on my good old memory and, for some reason, it came up with that piece of junk advice. My mind just seem to have flipped and I wasn't even conscious of the wrong reasoning in my post until I read your response to it! Thank God you rescued me from the grammar abyss!

As to my sister, no souvenirs yet for this early. We just helped her find a Tesoro's outlet--we found one along Pasay Road in Makati City--to fit and buy two blouses of indigenous weave. Very intricate and chic! She'll wear them to a grand reunion of her UP medical class later this week.

Again, madgirl09, thanks for the timely rescue and Merry Christmas!
   

[Joe Carillo]

We forgive you, Joe. And you Madgirl must now be given 3 stars by our Professor. Yes, it's Christmas in the Philippines and how I miss that land of beauty and self-doubt. I'm stuck in Europe as if I were a prisoner without any recourse but to escape! No, it has nothing to do with my husband, hahaha, it has to do with his nasty infection he caught three months ago the size of two golf balls and although the infection is almost gone, he'd need a minor operation to remove that "capsule" that is straining his back...Hmmm, can't join you guys yet. I'm hoping someday, we could really get together and have a wonderful time exchanging pleasantries and timeless memories.
A very Happy Christmas and may 2010 be equally good--if not better, for all of us. Peace, prosperity, health and happiness! A toast from Europe!

Thanks for the absolution, Hill! I am chastened and contrite for my grammar sins. And in recognition of madgirl09's valiant effort to save me from the pit of my abysmal grammar reasoning, I think I'll give her 4-1/2 stars. I'll reserve the remaining 1/2 star the next time she rescues me while unknowingly making another serious wrong grammar pronouncement.

I hope your husband gets well soon and I wish both of you a truly Merry Christmas!