The perfect form is the verb tense used in English to indicate a completed, or “perfected,” action or condition. As we learned in basic grammar, there are
three perfect tenses—the present perfect, the past perfect, and the future perfect—and that verbs in these tenses use a form of “have” or “had” + the past participle, as in “They
have lived in the city all these years” (present perfect), “Before the mother realized it, the little boy
had run out to the street” (past perfect), and “By this time next month the couple we
will have been separated for exactly a year” (future perfect).
Apart from the three perfect tenses, we need to be familiarize ourselves with the two other perfect forms—
the perfect gerund and
the perfect infinitive. We’ll first take up the perfect gerund this week and the perfect infinitive next week.
To make sure that things are clear in our mind, recall that a
gerund is the verb form with “-ing” affixed to it, making it function as a noun and not as a verb. This is the case in the sentence “The therapist suggested
jogging as a simple antidote to lethargy,” where the gerund “jogging” serves as the direct object of the verb “suggested.” A gerund has no tense and does not in itself indicate the time when the action takes place.
As to
the perfect gerund, it has the form “having been + past participle of the verb,” as in “She denied
having been divorced.” The use of the perfect gerund “having been divorced” makes it unmistakably clear that such marital status refers to a time before the woman’s denial of it. On the other hand, the use of the
simple gerund “being divorced” in “She denied
being divorced” indicates that the woman was indeed not a divorcee at the precise same time that she denied it.
We can thus see that the perfect gerund differs from the simple gerund in two respects: (a)
the perfect gerund always refers to a time before that of the verb in the main clause, and (b)
the perfect gerund is only used if the occurrence of the action expressed by the gerund isn’t obvious from the context of the statement. In contrast,
the simple gerund can (a) refer to the same time as that of the verb in the main clause, as in “She loves
listening to classical music,” or (b) it can refer to a time before that of the verb in the main clause, as in “He regretted
not joining the literary club when he was in college.”
Perfect gerunds of certain verbs can also take the passive form, as in “She complained of
having been unfairly bypassed for promotion.” Here, the passive perfect gerund “having been unfairly bypassed” functions as a complement of the verb “complained.” The sense is that the bypassing of the woman for promotion happened at a time before that of the verb “complained.”
A special form of the perfect gerund is “having been,” where the verb “be” in the perfect gerund isn’t followed by the usual action verb but by a noun or noun phrase. This form denotes a state or condition that no longer subsists at the time of speaking, as in the following sentence constructions:
1. A sentence using a perfect gerund as subject: “
Having been a student journalist is a big advantage to mass communication majors.”
2. A sentence using a perfect gerund as object of the preposition “about”: “Edna very seldom talked about
having been a beauty queen.”
3. A sentence using a perfect gerund as direct object of the verb: “The former long-serving CEO hated
having been a dummy all along.”
This winds up our discussion of the perfect gerund.
(Next week:
The perfect infinitive and its uses)
This essay, 1,177th of the series, appeared in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the Campus Press section of the January 2, 2020 print and Internet editions of The Manila Times
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