Questions tagged [perfect]
The perfect tag has no usage guidance.
23 questions
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Is vav-consecutive unique to Hebrew?
Is vav-consecutive (converting perfect to imperfect and vice versa) unique to Biblical Hebrew or are there similar features in other languages, beyond the Afroasiatic family ?
See also this answer to ...
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What is the name for this phenomenon, and what are some other examples of it?
Sorry if this is a duplicate, but I couldn't figure out how to search for this, especially since my only example involves two function words.
In English, we can say "I have not eaten." "...
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Present perfect tense vs simple past
I'm trying to understand the difference in meaning of these two. A site where I was learning German from explained like this:
The present perfect tense describes a past event that has present tense ...
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The verb to have in relation to the past
In many Indo-European languages, you use the verb "to have" to describe the past. For example:
"I have been",
"J'ai été", (French)
"He estado" (Spanish)
"...
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Merger of perfect and aorist in Italic and Celtic
One of the common features of the Italic and Celtic branches is the merger of perfect and aorist. So, in the surviving "perfect" forms we find a mixture of old aorist stems and old perfect ...
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Where did English get its perfect tense(s) from?
Apologies if this is too basic, but I know very little about linguistics and figured this would be a good place to ask.
English seems like it draws from several other langiuages, notably the romance ...
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Are there any known linguistic patterns that cause the verb "have" to take on this additional function?
I'm a native English speaker that has been learning Mandarin.
The Mandarin equivalent to the English verb "to have" is "有". As far as I can tell these two words are a 1 to 1 ...
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When did Spanish develop perfect aspect?
Latin and many other Romance languages do not have perfect aspect, but Greek has perfect aspect and Iberia was a land for Ancient Greek colonies.
So how and when Spanish integrates perfect aspect into ...
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What was the role of "compound" verbs in Middle English?
I was just reading a book where it is said that when perfect started to acquire modern meanings, "compound" verbs appeared. Here are some examples (I`m assuming with "compound" verbs on the right):
...
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Periphrastic verb forms in Gothic
What periphrastic verb form are attested in the Gothic language, the oldest Germanic language we have substantial records from?
Skimming through a grammar of Gothic I found that for the past tense ...
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Where did the use of the two auxiliaries in the Romance languages come from?
Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French all have a (compound) perfect tense, which I find curious, given that Latin did not. (You can alternatively perhaps say that it is either united with the ...
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What languages have a Perfect Imperative and what is the meaning of such a tense-mood combination?
I self-studied Greek long ago, and I found this Perfect Imperative. Now all the Greek grammars I looked at just throw it at you, expecting you to either completely ignore or downright not have what ...
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Is there really a perfect tense?
I went through my entire English and French educations learning nothing about aspect. We only learned about tenses and a little bit about mood. With that K12* vocabulary, we'd call J'avais mangé l'...
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History of "have", "avoir", "haben", etc. as auxiliary
In Geoff Pullum's recent post Being an Auxiliary on the Lingua Franca blog, he states that the sense of "have" as an auxiliary (forming the perfect tense) evolved from the possession sense, "but the ...
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Does the Perfect in addition to its perfect meaning also denotes perfective / imperfective / either meaning (in English and Spanish)?
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 ...
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How verb tenses evolve
I have two questions on this topic. The firstmay be too general, but basically, I am curious as to how tenses evolve and whether tenses between languages can be used to help find out whether languages ...
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Oddity with the English perfect
Consider the sentence:
She is believed to be the best female golfer alive.
From this the listener infers: Some people believe that she is the best female golfer alive.
Now, take a look at another ...
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Is the English perfect really monosemous?
The perfect in English has many faces:
(1) I have done my homework.
(2) I had already done my homework by then.
(3) If I had done my homework yesterday, I would come with you.
(4) Having done my ...
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Why is 'be' sometimes the auxiliary verb for the present perfect?
1. Why do these 16 verbs require être as the auxiliary verb, to form the passé composé in French?
2. Abbreviated as DMPRRS, these 6 (of the 16) are ambitransitive. When transitive, their auxiliary ...
user5306
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How did the same perfect-tense structure become so widespread in Europe?
In many Germanic and Romance languages, the perfect tense is formed with the verb 'to have' or 'to be' plus a past participle. It's easy to find explanations ["I have an arrow (which is) made (by me)"...
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Relationship between possession ("to have") and tenses ("I have seen")
In several Indo-European languages the verb that denotes possession (to have) is also used to construct verb tenses.
Some examples:
I have seen ... I have a dog. (English)
Am văzut ... Am un câine. (...
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Alternatives to the Perfect Aspect
In English and (at least a portion of) other Indo-European languages the perfect aspect's foremost role is that of a discourse marker, marking prior events (or events beginning in the past and ...
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PIE Aspect: (Im)perfective or (Non-)progressive?
According to Wikipedia Proto-Indo-European had four tense-aspects, the first being stative and the latter three being eventive: stative aspect, perfective aspect, and past and present tense of ...
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