Verbs: Secondary tense

The secondary tense is the perfect

The perfect is a past tense that is expressed with an additional auxiliary verb: “have”.

Perfect always has past time meaning:

She has been out of the office. (present perfect, compound tense)

She is out of the office. (non-perfect)

She had left town. (preterite perfect, compound tense)

She left town. (non-perfect)

She is said to have spoken Greek. (Perfect, have in plain form)

She is said to speak Greek(non-perfect)

Important

“Secondary tense” does not require “primary tense”.

Primary tense and secondary tense are independent dimensions.

In:

She is said to have spoken Greek

“have” is in the plain form, so this time there is no primary tense in the subordinate clause, and no compound tense: it’s simply a case of secondary tense (the perfect) in a clause that does not have primary tense.

When a clause has both primary tense and secondary tense it has a “compound tense”

The present perfect

Past time, perfective interpretation

The present perfect, like the simple preterite, the non-perfect preterite, in its central use, locates the situation, or part of it, in past time.

As a result, the interpretation is usually perfective: what’s past is over and done with.

She has read your letter (present perfect)

She read your letter (simple preterite)

Important

Present perfect is a compound tense combining past and present

Time adjuncts

Adjuncts referring to the present

Under certain conditions the present perfect allows time adjuncts referring to the present.

And conversely, the present perfect more or less excludes time adjuncts referring to the past, since they divorce the situation from present time:

We have by now finished most of it (present perfect, present time adjunct)

We by now finished most of I (preterite, not allowed)

She has finished her thesis last week (present perfect does not allow a definite past time expression)

She finished her thesis last week (preterite, past time adjunct)

See also

Time adjuncts (linguistic richness)

Current relevance

Relevance to the present

With the present perfect, the past time situation is usually conceived of as having some kind of current relevance, relevance to the present

She has lived in Paris for ten years (connection with present, imperfective interpretation: she is still living in Paris)

Note

A perfective interpretation is also available for if, for instance, it was the answer to the question:

how long has she lived in each city?

She lived in Paris for ten years (period in Paris located wholly in the past, can only be interpreted perfectively)

She has met the President (past experience viewed perfectively as it affects her status now, puts her in a present state of being among the few who met the president)

She met the President (simply reporting a fact)

The premier has resigned. (hot news, tv etc)

The premier resigned.

You*’ve dyed your hair.* (present results of past event)

You dyed your hair. (simply presents a past event)

Note

There is anoticeable difference between AmE and BrE.

I did that already (AmE)

I’ve already done that (BrE)

Even though the adverb already calls attention to the prior occurrence and current results of an event.

AmE speakers readily understand the use of the perfect in such contexts, but use it less frequently

The preterite perfect

Perfect of past time, modal preterite, bachshift

All the three usage of the preterite are found in the preterite perfect:

She had gone to bed (putting the perfect “have” to the preterite “had” locate in past time, so with the perfect there are two components of past time: “had” and “gone to bed”, which is relative to some other past time)

Note

Relative to another past time:

She had already gone to bed when we arrived

It would have been better if she had gone to bed (modal remoteness)

Note

We need the “had gone” perfect, because when we use the preterite “went”, we get a modal preterite.

It would have been better if she went to bed. (now/soon, not past)

“went” is busy communicating remoteness, but we need need a way to say:

…and the imagined event is before now.

The perfect solves this. had gone is the preterite perfect construction that expresses an anterior relation to a past reference time, and the preterite form of the auxiliary have (had) carries the preterite’s modal remoteness function in the conditional.

So we get hypothetical remoteness in past time

You said she had gone to bed (backshift, indicate not only that she went to bed in the past, but that it is in the past relative to your time of speaking. I accomplish this by backshifting the past tense went/has gone to the preterite perfect)

Note

Both simple present and present perfect are backshifted to the same form: past perfect.

English does not have more than one past perfect, so both are identical.

Original	Backshifted
She went to bed.	He said she had gone to bed.
She has gone to bed.	He said she had gone to bed.

In all three cases here, the most likely and perhaps only interpretation is perfective.

Perfect with no primary tense

"Have" appears in secondary form

No primary (inflectional) tense.

The perfect in this case serves to locate the situation in past time - just like the preterite in clauses that do have primary tense.

We believe that she was in Bonn (primary tense, preterite)

We believe her to have been in Bonn (no primary tense, perfect)

As we reached agreement today, we don’t need to meet tomorrow (primary tense, preterite)

Having reached agreement today, we don’t need to meet tomorrow (no primary tense, perfect)

The past is expressed with preterite or the perfect in secondary form. Without more context, both are likely be interpreted perfectively.

Primary and secondary past tense

Preterite is the primary past tense, perfect is the secondary

We refer to the preterite as the primary past tense and the perfect as the secondary one.

• The preterite represents the most common, or default, way of locating the situation in past time

• The preterite can’t be used in clauses without inflectional tense (“Having reached agreement…”)[45ib/iib]:

• The perfect is then called into service to perform the job that, in the the simple cases is performed by the preterite

The continuative perfect

Situation over a period of time

One difference between the perfect and the preterite is that we can use the perfect to indicate that the situation lasted over a period, starting before a certain time and continuing up to that time, an imperfective interpretation.

CGEL terms: Continuatives vs. non-continuative.

She has already gone to bed (non-continuative, locates her going to bed in the past, relative to the time of speaking in the present perfect)

She has been in bed for two hours (continuative, preterite perfect, past, relative to the time of our arrival)

She had already gone to bed when we arrived (non continuative, period: began two hours before the time of speaking, lasting until now)

She had been in bed for two hours when we arrived (continuative, period: began two hours before we arrived, lasting until then time of speaking, lasting until then)

The continuation is imperfective. We don’t know if the situation (“her in bed”) ended at the time of the utterance or when we arrived.

The continuative use of the perfect is much less common.

It is only with states, which typically resist the progressive, that the continuative perfect is commonly used.

Note

It is also possible with certain verbs with inherently continuative semantics like continue or stretch.