Author Topic: The Present Perfect Tense (again!)  (Read 5741 times)

Miss Mae

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The Present Perfect Tense (again!)
« on: December 10, 2014, 09:40:12 PM »
As you have explained last time, the present perfect tense conveys an action that continued for a certain length of time in the recent past but ended shortly before or up to the time of speaking. Does that mean that the sentence below is grammatically incorrect, Sir?

The Philippine Embassy in Abu Dhabi announced that it will be conducting special passport renewal services for overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) on certain weekends this month.

There should be "has" between "The Philippine Embassy in Abu Dhabi" and "announced," right?
« Last Edit: December 10, 2014, 10:25:40 PM by Miss Mae »

Joe Carillo

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Re: The Present Perfect Tense (again!)
« Reply #1 on: December 11, 2014, 09:11:08 AM »
Strictly speaking, and taking it as a stand-alone sentence in, say, a grammar notebook, that announcement should be constructed not in the simple past tense but in the present perfect tense, as follows:

“The Philippine Embassy in Abu Dhabi has announced that it will be conducting special passport renewal services for overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) on certain weekends this month.”

This is because as the rulebook for English tenses prescribes, the simple past tense needs a specific time referent for the action of the verb like, say, “yesterday” or “last week” or “last month” to warrant its usage. Indeed, since no such time referent is specified for the past action, that sentence should take the past perfect as default tense, as follows:

“The Philippine Embassy in Abu Dhabi had announced that it would be conducting special passport renewal services for overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) on certain weekends this month.”

(Note that the announced action has backshifted from the future progressive “will be conducting” to the conditional progressive “would be conducting.” Refer to “The proper way to construct sentences for reported speech”; “The conditional progressive or conditional continuous”)

The problem is that today, the great speed of news reporting using modern telecommunications technology has seriously undermined the need to specify the time referent as a built-in component of sentences in recent reportage. It is no longer tenable for today’s reporters and editors to use the scrupulously correct present-perfect tense for recent announcements (such as the one you presented) knowing that the reader might be reading that news item between today and anytime into the far future, in which case a built-in time referent in the announcement sentence would just confuse or mislead the reader with every passing hour or day or month.

To avoid such time-sensitive incongruities, modern news reporting typically uses the simple past tense for recent announcements without necessarily building in a time referent in the sentence itself. I am sure you’ve noticed that particularly in online news reports, that time referent is now indicated in very precise detail (date, day, and even time and minute and second) right before the news story itself. This gives the reader utmost flexibility in mentally establishing an accurate time frame for what is being read without having to bother with its usage of the tenses.

Take a look at this recent CNN report (italicizations and boldfacing mine) where the simple past tense is used instead of the scrupulously correct past perfect for the recent actions that are being reported:

Quote
Torture report: U.S. faces harsh realities
By Tim Lister, CNN

December 10, 2014 -- Updated 2113 GMT (0513 HKT)

(CNN) -- Embarrassment for allies, ammunition for enemies -- but no recommendations laid down for the future treatment of alleged terrorists taken prisoner. It would seem that publication by the Senate Intelligence Committee (or at least its Democrats) of its report into the torture of detainees just brought a heap of trouble.

The Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Mike Rogers, told CNN that publication was “a terrible idea” and said “foreign leaders have approached the government and said, ‘You do this, this will cause violence and deaths.’” He was not alone on fearing a visceral global reaction.

Of course, for less time-sensitive news media like daily newspapers and news weeklies, it typically suffices to put the place and dateline up front of the news lead, as follows:

Quote
WASHINGTON, December 10, 2014— Embarrassment for allies, ammunition for enemies -- but no recommendations laid down for the future treatment of alleged terrorists taken prisoner. It would seem that publication by the Senate Intelligence Committee (or at least its Democrats) of its report into the torture of detainees just brought a heap of trouble.

The Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Mike Rogers, told CNN that publication was “a terrible idea” and said “foreign leaders have approached the government and said, ‘You do this, this will cause violence and deaths.’” He was not alone on fearing a visceral global reaction.

What all this means is that in contemporary news reportage, the simple past tense has technically trumped the present perfect in the interest of sustaining timeliness, the evidently flawed grammar notwithstanding.