Does the Perfect in addition to its perfect meaning also denotes perfective / imperfective / either meaning (in English and Spanish)?

Question

Just to note that I'm well aware as to the difference between the perfect and perfective aspects.

Up until recently I though that the Perfect aspect can denote (in addition to its perfect aspect meaning) also either a perfective or an imperfective aspect meaning (depending on the context).

However, lately I've stumbled upon these claims:

• source: It's said that the Perfect tenses in Spanish denote a perfective meaning, while the Conditional and Future denote imperfective meaning.

• source: It's said that the Present Perfect in Spanish denotes a perfective meaning.

My Questions:

1. Does the non-progressive Present Perfect (Perfecto), Past Perfect (Pluscuamperfecto), Preterite Anterior (Pretérito Anterior) in Spanish necessarily denote perfective meaning or can they also denote imperfective meaning?

2. Does the non-progressive Perfect in English necessarily denotes perfective meaning or can it also denote imperfective meaning?

3. Does the Future (in English and Spanish) and Conditional (in Spanish) necessarily denote imperfective meaning or can they also denote perfective meaning?

4. What about Future Perfect and Conditional Perfect which are a combination of 1,2 and 3 above?

Answer 1

Since I have practically no knowledge of Spanish, I can answer only the English part.

First of all, the English Perfect is not an aspect. The two English aspects are Continuous (progressive) and Non-Continuous (non-progressive). A verb form cannot have two aspects at the same time, but English has several Perfect Continuous tenses and several Perfect Non-Continuous ones, that is, English can combine Continuous/Non-Continuous aspect with Perfect/Non-Perfect, and that is evidence that Perfect/Non-Perfect is not an aspect, look at it as just another category, perfectness, which is not an aspect.

Question 2. No. Some English verbs like sense perception ('see', 'hear', etc.) or likes/dislikes verbs ('love', 'hate', etc.) cannot be put into Continuous (progressive), so their Perfect forms can denote actions that are still in progress, e. g. 'I've loved you so much' which would correspond to the imperfective aspect, but at the same time that very sentence can denote an action/state that has already finished, and in this case it would correspond to the perfective aspect.

Question 3. If by Future you mean Future Indefinite aka Future Simple, the answer is also No. Have a look, 'Will you come to me?' in some situations can imply just one visit (tonight) which corresponds to the perfective aspect, but in some other situations it can imply multiple visits (every day) which corresponds to the imperfective aspect.

Question 4. Again No. That follows from the answers to questions 2 and 3, and also from the fact that the very idea of the perfective and imperfective aspects is totally irrelevant for the English grammar and it absolutely does not correlate with the English verb category of perfect/non-perfect.

Answer 2

As for Spanish:

1. Perfecto is usually perfective, but in some situations an imperfective reading is also possible. For example:

He vivido allí durante toda mi vida.

It may (but does not have to) mean that you still live there. I think pluscuamperfecto may have imperfective reading, too. I'm not sure about pretérito anterior, a native Spanish speaker would need to comment on it.

3. Futuro simple may have a perfective meaning. Here is an example (p. 97):

Aunque vendrá mañana no lo veré, moriré antes.

The verb moriré is clearly perfective here.

4. Both aspects are possible in futuro perfecto. Here are some examples:

En septiembre habré vivido aquí durante ocho años.

The only sensible interpretation I can see is that the action of "living here" will still be ongoing as of September, so its aspect is imperfective. But:

Habremos vuelto a casa antes de las cinco horas.

The action of "returning" will be completed by five o'clock, so it has a perfective aspect.