Again we will talk about Past and Perfect, but this time with a little more difficulty.
We may start with a common phenomenon in conversation:John said, "Have you been there?"
Mary answered, "Yes, I have been there."
John asked, "When?"
Mary replied, "I was there last Saturday."In this conversation, they are talking about one same thing. However, Mary did use different tenses. Yes, the meanings of her sentences are not quite the same, but we shall agree Mary related the same thing, and most of all, THE SAME THING OF THE SAME TIME, with different details. We can hardly imagine that one will say, "There are two happenings here. One is 'Mary has been there'; another is 'Mary was there last Saturday'."
Now in the usual way, in the current tense theory, grammars will hold the weight of the two tenses, telling the slight difference of them. But for us, we shall explain them in a more proper way: We actually use both Past and Perfect to tell the same thing of the same time. Say what you will, Past will be Perfect.
Are Past and Perfect really the same meaning? We have discussed about them in A question about tenses(6): The twin brothers. I have lately invented one more simple, revealing test for here. If some people still say Past and Perfect are of different meanings, then we shall have no trouble to put different yet supportive meanings in one paragraph, shall we? Do we ever do it ourselves: to put them together side by side in one paragraph? as in:?Ex: "Mary, look here. I bought and have bought a hat. Isn't this beautiful?"
?Ex: "I saw and have seen the movie."Do we do or see something like this in any writing? But the truth is, since the two tenses have the same meaning, we shall not try this redundant expression.
Should a man read more grammars, he would try to say, "Yes, we must have seen such argument in grammars. It is about the old question: Past and Perfect. Not some news." Then what do we see from the following similar conversation?Mary said, "I live in Hong Kong."
John asked, "Since when?"
Mary answered, "I have lived in Hong Kong since 1970."The conclusion we find here is, as above, both Present and Perfect are used to describe THE SAME THING OF THE SAME TIME, with different details.
Any news? We may now see that we not only have a difficulty to differentiate Past from Perfect, but also the difficulty to distinguish between Present and Perfect! Believe it or not, there is another as big confusion people have yet noticed, a big problem waiting to emerge! Say what you could, Present will be Perfect.
We can only perceive past, present, and future time, but why do we have Past, Perfect, Present, and Future tenses? English tenses are one too many for the current tense theory to handle. And grammars don't even start to define past, present, and future yet. I am afraid English grammars nowadays will have a long way to come close to the true use of tenses.
Shun Tang
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