Present perfect ver
They are present perfect, past perfect and future perfect. The perfect tenses describe a finished action. They are present progressive, past progressive and future progressive. The progressive tenses are used to indicate an unfinished action. They are present (simple), past (simple) and future (simple). The simple tenses are used for actions that occurred at a specific time either in the present, past or future, but they do not state whether or not the action is finished. There are four types of verb aspects: simple, progressive, perfect and perfect progressive. Past tense is used to describe actions that occurred in the past present tense is used to describe actions that are currently taking place and future tense is used to describe an action that will take place in the future.Īspect refers to the state of action of a verb. Past, present and future are the three time frames that are used to describe or indicate verb tense. Together, the time frame and the aspect make up the complete verb tense (past progressive, future perfect, etc. has solved the problem by adding conditional under the three traditional tenses.Each verb tense is composed of a time frame (past, present, future) and an aspect (simple, progressive, perfect, perfect progressive). As "would" ist the past tense of "will", subjunctive and sometimes indicative, too it is possible to see conditional as a tense as well. Remark: In English grammars conditional is seen as a mood and is lacking in almost all conjugation tables.
German uses perfect in the north as in English, in the south perfect is used as the English past tense. English uses perfect for things past with a bearing on the present time. And the use is not the same for all languages. The use of these tenses is a thing that must be learnt from grammars. You could also call the first set "left", present left etc, and the second set "right", present right etc. Just names, so we can talk about the tenses. Present 2, past 2, future 2, conditional 2. Present 1, past 1, future 1, conditional 1 and You could use other names for the tenses: Both events are completed in the past, so it makes not much sense to call one tense past, and the other perfect. But in modern languages the name is just a name and doesn't say anything essential. In the verbix table present perfect is simply called perfect, past perfect is called pluperfect, just another name for the same thing.Īs to the name perfect, which means completed, it was the grammar term in Latin where it may have been justified. has a conjugation table that shows the two sets of tenses very well. Present perfect, past perfect, future perfect, conditional perfect. We have simple tenses: present, past, future, conditional.Īnd parallel to these tenses we have a second set of tenses: Latin and other languages like Italian, French, German, English have a double tense system in active and passive. I've quoted quite a bit from the very descriptive A Student's Introduction to English Grammar by Huddleston and Pullum.Īs noted in answer, I understand that the perfect part comes from the Latin perfectus, meaning "completed". Use of the present perfect in the first sentence indicates that she still lives in this city while use of the simple past in the second indicates that she lived in this city in the past, but no longer does. She has lived in this city for ten years. With the present perfect, the situation in the past is seen to have some kind of current relevance. (incorrect)Ĭonversely, the present perfect does not allow the use of time adjuncts referring to the past.
The present perfect, like the simple past, locates the situation, or part of it, in the past: