Perfect vs. Perfect Progressive

[Lighthouse1971b]

No matter how he says, conventional grammars cannot explain Present Perfect. Can he?

I predict that, what he says to Present Perfect can be word for word said again to either Simple Present or Simple Past. Can you restate the opinion how he explains Present Perfect?

If Comrie is that good, how come you have to come here asking around?

You, sir, are merely a sophist. By the way, Comrie doesn't write about conventional grammar and wouldn't take issue with any of what you just wrote. Why are you babbling on and on without reading the things I mentioned first? That's called "talking through your hat" where I come from. I don't have the time or the inclination to summarize it for you here. You bore me. By the way, none of those examples contradict what I have written. When used with a plural subject, there is no problem with "have been understanding/reaching." This time, I really will stop communicating with you. You can have the last word. You really like that. I can tell.

[Stephen Jones]

I'm not too sure about your examples. To be frank some of your examples in the sematically equal section appear to be the same as those in the semanticallly unequal section.

I always say that the present perfect continous is putting the emphasis on the action, or the time spent doing the action, whilst the Present Perfect Simple is more concerned with the action and its result.

[Stephen Jones]

And one minor gripe - applies to others too!

It is a convention on the net that underlining is only used for hyperlinks. This is doubly true when they are colored blue. Failing to follow that convention on the net is a bit like using the exclamation mark instead of a comma in print.

[Lighthouse1971b]

Thanks for your straightforward response. I think that view on it has validity. I've seen it in Raymond Murphy's textbook. However, I've found another explanation (since my exchange with shuntang) that helped me a lot more. Bernard Comrie says, while speaking about Russian:

"...without a more elaborate paraphrase there is no way of conveying the idea contained in the English Progressive Perfect of a situation that has been interrupted but whose completed portion has present results."

I like this definition because it ties Perfect and Progressive together. I have also found that it serves to explain absolutely every example that I can come up with. I haven't tried to teach it to students that way, and I suspect Murphy's explanation might be more useful in the classroom. However, Comrie's definition helped me tremendously with my grammatical analysis of this grammar point.

I agree now, after a lot more reading, that every example above should fall into one category. All of the PPP examples can be explained using Comrie's analysis above (and probably Murphy's, but I haven't looked).

However, the example of "I have learned English - I have been learning English" seemed different at first because the Perfect so clearly implies completion whereas the PPP does not clearly do so. Comrie calls these situations "telic" (more jargon I suppose) where there is a clear end to the task (like making a chair or singing a song as opposed to just singing). It doesn't matter, though, now that I understand what separates Perfect and PP.

Thank you for your lucid, simple response, Steven.

[Lighthouse1971b]

p.s. Sorry about the "blue" thing. It was just a random colour choice. The similarity to a link didn't occur to me.

[LarryLatham]

I see you have run into Shun Tang and his usual shenanigans. In all fairness to him, however, he did legitimately point out, in his final post on page one of this...what shall I call it, discussion?...perfectly good examples of forms that you, Lighthouse1971b, did imply were unacceptable. I'm guessing that you read somewhere (in a grammar book) that those forms were no-no's. But Shun Tang's point is good: It's better not to be so fast to claim the unacceptability of a form on the basis of one or two examples that don't seem to make sense at first blush.

To address your original question, you might be well advised to remember that English grammar is a combinatorial system. Particular parts of it contribute to the meaning of complex forms in predictable ways, and, if we're careful about defining the meaning of the parts, in meaningful ways.

The difference between Present Perfect and Present Perfect Continuous is exactly nothing more nor less than what the "continuous" component adds to the second form. Every time. In all examples.

Your "semantically equal" examples are not semantically equal at all, despite there being a sort of pragmatic sameness to them. Let's take one pair of them:

I have coughed all morning.
I have been coughing all morning.

Since the verb forms in both sentences are "perfect" forms, we can safely conclude that the meanings of both structures exhibit the characteristics of perfection: that two times are involved, and that retrospection is involved. Both of them, in fact, are "present" perfect forms, and so we can see that one of the relevant times in both cases is "present time". Put another way, in both of these sentences, the user is placing himself at the present moment (of speaking or writing) and looking backward in time to an event, which obviously occurred before "now".

So far, so good. We have identified the similarities between the two sentences. But there are also differences, and the same differences apply for all your examples, indeed for any examples of the two forms. The verb phrase in the first example sentence contains "coughed." The other one contains "been coughing." In the second example, the user is, at the exact moment of use, conceiving the coughing event as extended in time, or having a beginning and continuing for some period of time. (That is, of course, the primary essence of "continuous" forms). However, in the first example, the user is, at the moment of use, conceiving the coughing event as a single, unified, organic whole. It is simple. It is indivisible (as conceived). It is unitary.

And that , Lighthouse1971b, is the difference between the two. It holds for all of your examples. Hopefully, this does not confuse you further. My intent is to be helpful.


Larry Latham

[Lighthouse1971b]

Thanks, Larry. That helps too. I've definitely got it now. Shuntang just got my back up. I wish everybody would be polite in these forums. I was trying to keep an open mind, but he just wouldn't address my original question until I forced the issue.

I like your take on it, and I still really like the explanation that I found in Comrie (in my previous posting). As always, people learn in various ways, and multiple slants on the same concept emerge. It's good to stockpile a variety of different explanations for the ESL classroom.

That's why I wanted to raise it here even though I was sorting through it with my own resources. Thanks again.

[Stephen Jones]

I tnink Larry is saying the same thing as me, but from another angle. I suspect he is also doing it somewhat more elegantly.

[Lighthouse1971b]

Shuntang did say one thing that is a common idea, and that is that Perfect is more of a "tense" than an "aspect". Actually, he stated outright that it was a tense, but clearly that's not cut and dried in the field of linguistics.

It's a trivial distinction in day-to-day life, but it becomes quite important when you get down to a theoretical teasing of hairs. Huddleston says, in his book Introduction to the Grammar of English:

"Clearly, however, the system of perfect aspect is very much closer to a tense system than is that of progressive aspect - and this is reflected in the fact that when have does not carry the present tense inflection we have a neutralisation of the aspect-type and tense-type meanings."

Well, clearly my brain has neutralised the meaning of his statement because I just don't get it. Does anybody care to venture a guess as to what he means?

Maybe the statement has neutralised my brain....yes, that's probably it....

[Stephen Jones]

I always thought the Present perfect was the tense we used to express the Perfect aspect in the Present.

[Lighthouse1971b]

I always thought the Present perfect was the tense we used to express the Perfect aspect in the Present.

Sure, why not? I guess it all boils down to terminology, really. Most linguists seem to want to separate tense from aspect completely, but certainly not all of them do that.

The only real difference is that you're calling the combination of the two things (Present Perfect) a tense...and you're also (I assume) considering "past" and "present" to be tenses because you've separated "present" from the perfect aspect in your definition.

So, Tense + Aspect = a new Tense?

Here's a question for you, then. Do we have future "tense" in English? It's certainly up for debate among those who care (a select group I realize). The negative argument is based mostly on the fact that future isn't inflected in English, but some linguists say that's really not that important.

James Hurford says, in his book Grammar: A Student's Guide, "In this dictionary, we keep to the traditional grammarian's terminology. But 'tense' is an area in which the traditional terminology is indeed quite crude. The more modern distinction between tense and aspect is a valuable refinement, and advanced detailed work on languages must make this distinction."

Theories abound, but certainty on this issue seems scarce.

[LarryLatham]

"Clearly, however, the system of perfect aspect is very much closer to a tense system than is that of progressive aspect - and this is reflected in the fact that when have does not carry the present tense inflection we have a neutralisation of the aspect-type and tense-type meanings."

This may be clear to Professor Huddleston, but it surely is not to me. Perhaps the preceding few paragraphs may contain introductory and defining material which would make his statement (let's see...would this be a general statement, or a specific statement, Stephen? ) clear, but out of context, as it appears here, it is undecipherable.

Larry Latham

[Lighthouse1971b]

I read it in context and it was still indecipherable to me. Maybe I shouldn't admit that in public. It just kind of lurches out of the blue in the book. He might explain it two chapters later. He has a habit of doing that without letting on. Thanks for your feedback anyway.

[LarryLatham]

Good luck!

If you find out what it means, I'd sure like to know too.

Larry Latham