simple past vs. present perfect

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 10:02 pm

Actually, the imaginary dialogue I posted there didn't sound 100% convincing to me either, as I wrote it...I was just presenting it as a possibility (and I think anyone would agree that it is a possible, imaginable dialogue).

Tara B · Post by **Tara B** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 10:08 pm

Stephen Jones wrote:

Actually revel 'did you eat already?' is BBC English
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learn ... v123.shtml

I looked at these examples and to me they seem to indicate the opposite-- that "did you eat already" is a distinctly American phenomenon. . .

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 10:32 pm

Tara B wrote:Stephen Jones wrote:

Actually revel 'did you eat already?' is BBC English
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learn ... v123.shtml
I looked at these examples and to me they seem to indicate the opposite-- that "did you eat already" is a distinctly American phenomenon. . .

Hmm...but you wrote only a short while before this that:

Tara B wrote:
Fluffyhamster wrote:
I'm a Brit, so I would use present perfect in the first situation.
I think we are making too much out of the British/American differences here. I'm not sure your using present perfect in this situation has anything to do with you being a Brit.

ssean · Post by **ssean** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 10:41 pm

past simple as an action that started and finished in past and present perfect as an action with relevance to now i can understand, but using present perfect to talk about experiences i find hard to explain eg i have been to China, i have walked on the great wall.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 10:48 pm

Yes, the experiential is tricky...probably best not to make too lengthy a list of "experiences" (complete with lots of hand-waving), and get down to nitty-gritty (simple past) "specifics" (in response to a nice fat juicy general question from somebody): Have you been to China? Yes, I went there last summer, actually.

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 8:43 am

Tara, you forgot to switch the irony meter on before reading.

but using present perfect to talk about experiences i find hard to explain eg i have been to China, i have walked on the great wall.

The Red Queen theory of punctuation and capital letters - "off with their heads!"

To understand tense you must understand these things

The Present Perfect is a present tense
You choose the present tense or a past tense according to whether the time frame in which the action happened is viewed as past or non-past. Note that you are referring to the time frame not the time the action took place in. The action objectively took place in the past but the time frame is closed.
The choice of time frame is subjective; that is to say what matters is whether the speaker views the time frame as being closed or not. This is why "Did you eat ?" and "Have you eaten?" are alternatives even though the objective fact is the same. The point is that the time frame in the first case is viewed as being closed, past, and in the second case as being still open, non-past.

For explaining use boxes. Put "They walk on the Great Wall?" in a box that is closed before the present and "They've walked on the Great Wall" in a box which is open at the end facing the present.

ssean · Post by **ssean** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 12:15 am

Thanks for the tip, grammar is all a question of perspective, I will use the box idea and see how it works.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 12:31 am

If you use SJ's box idea, you might want to put some better examples in it the boxes, eh?

Tara B · Post by **Tara B** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 9:43 pm

Thank you all for your explanations. I have been looking around and found almost the same question answered in other places, too, so thanks for being patient and explaining it all again. I guess I can see why the student books don't use Stephen's explanation--"time frame" probably works quite well for linguists, but is a pretty abstract idea for an ESL grammar class. Good for the teacher to know, just the same.

On a more practical note, I'm assuming Stephen's boxes would go along with a timeline? I do something similar, but I use brackets instead of boxes. Simple past has a complete bracket in the past. Present perfect an unfinished bracket straddling the present.

What I think the textbooks are missing, though, is really a good way to practice this; an opportunity to choose between the two. Of course in order to do this you have to choose a context where only one option is correct, and make it perfectly clear, without giving away the answer. I have tried comic-book style dialogue boxes, where the students fill in the blanks, but I had to make my own (the poor students who had to put up with my drawing!). It would be great if someone could point me to a textbook with some good practice activities.

The most common error I encounter is students over-using the simple past. I see this especially with my Spanish speakers. Funny that Spanish has a present perfect tense, probably explained the same way as Stephen explained the English, and yet they would still be making this error. . .

saerf · Post by **saerf** » Mon Apr 25, 2005 4:52 am

I had one small note to Stephen. He said:

The whole point of the question is surely that there aren't any time markers.

In fact, a perfect verb is a time marker. You can't use a perfect verb if there are not two points in time.

Did you eat? can mean "anytime in the past" or "before now"
Have you eaten means eat in the past but a past that is close to now--not anytime before now=two times (1) eat in past (2) close to now. You can't do this with past tense without using a time word:
Did you eat before now?
You also have two points of time with past perfect and future perfect; therefore, perfect=two points of time

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simple past vs. present perfect

no time marker