Nice to hear the history of the perfect. When I began teaching nerly 30 years
ago everyone was spouting Latin definitions for English structures which
sometimes seemed illogical.

This idea of up to present or into present is what I try to show in my Chalk
Board sketches,( badly explained in my last mail) , where Past is O = completion
( as the form suggests) and perfect sits between Past 'O'  and Present 'l'(Slash
in out time line), which means one of its trademarks is
<It places an action in a period of time that started in the
past but that is felt to be recent, connected to the present, and may still
be continuing.>
see our socks sentence. Many of these can also be in pres.perfect. continuous
which stresses the ' and now' feeling which Johanna was talking about.Its most
important trademark  seems to me to be 'action is more important than time, and
present connections or open options'.
' We know man has landed on the moon -what more is he capable of.' This action
doesn't feel recent to my students, but the action is more important than the
time it took place
I tell my students where there's  no element in the sentence or in the text to
pinpoint the action to time (complete) or place/ indirect time, use present
perfect.An 'incomplete' open time element like ' all my life','this year' etc
can be indicated on the time line and is open for repetitions or further
developments. Similarly 'tricky' ones:
She has lived here ten years.
She lived here ten years.
can also be placed on the time line. The student just decides where 'ten years'
should be situated on the line,either within past tense O, complete, or from
present ,l, ten years back.I use something like, 'C', reaching up to present,l,
=Cl , which indicates as said <connected to the present, and may still be
continuing.>
Strictly speaking we are talking about complete actions but they have options
open for now and the future unlike the irreversible simple past.
She lived here ten years. ( complete + irreversible)
She has lived here ten years ( true, ten years are completed and if she
continues it'll be eleven etc.)
Man has landed on the moon and he can go on to other great achievements in
space.
He has loved her... ( up to now and its his option to continue or stop here).
I will also stop here as I always find is easier to explain many elements of
tense by illustrating their place on our time line.
Patsi Reeve-De Becker


"Haussamen, Brock" wrote:

> "I have worked hard all my life,"
> "She has lived here for a year"?  Although the tense says something about
> the relation of past action to the present, its trademark should not be the
> idea of completion.
>
> Linguists and some early grammarians, such as Lindley Murray, have
> recognized (notice the "have" that I just used does not imply that their
> recognizing is over and done with) the more consistent feature of the
> perfect tense.  It places an action in a period of time that started in the
> past but that is felt to be recent, connected to the present, and may still
> be continuing.  "I have worked hard all my life" and "He has finished his
> dinner" both show that the speaker, while referring to different lengths of
> time, considers a past time which is connected to the present moment. (The
> finishing of the dinner was certainly recent, in relation to the moment of
> speaking.) Within this prior but connected period, an action may have been
> completed, or it may still be going on.
>
> Ironically, the tense that DOES indicate that an action is completed,
> finished, and part of a separate, more distant past, is the plain ole past
> tense itself, with no "have" in sight.  "I worked hard all my life" means I
> am retired now.  Compare "She has lived here ten years" which means she
> still does, with "She lived here ten years" which means her living here is
> finished, part of a past unconnected to the present.
>
> Our false definition of the perfect tense is, I think, a serious flaw in
> conventional grammar.  Blame William Lily, who in 1510 translated the Latin
> perfect tense (which does show completed action) with have.  HIs grammar
> book was so influential with English royalty and English education that we
> are still stuck with his mistake.  He should have translated the Latin
> perfect with the English plain past but grammarians at the time got their
> heads pretty turned around trying to match English to Latin grammar.
> Clearly, to me at least, "He has loved her" can mean either that he still
> does or that he recently stopped, depending on the context; but "He loved
> her" is unambiguous--it's over.
>