On Fri, 6 Apr 2001, Johanna Rubba wrote:
Johanna,
In reading your post, I begin to wonder what the difficulty is. I have to
explain the English present perfect to Latin students all the time, since
the Latin "perfect" is used both when English speakers would use the
present perfect and when they would use the simple or remote past. My
explanation is the present perfect is used to characterize an action that
is complete ("perfect") but was completed so recently that it is still
relevant to one's understanding of the present moment. "The Chinese have
refused to return our spy plane," but not "Brutus has assassinated
Caesar." Granted, like any semantic characterization, this basic idea
will have a number of different applications depending on the context.
What I wonder is what kind of description of the use of the present
perfect would satisfy of contemporary linguist. Would it be a
better version of a definition like the one that I suggest or a completely
explicit set of empirical rules... or what?
David
> The present perfect tense-aspect construction is one of the more
> difficult points of English grammar to understand and explain in a
> metalinguistic sense; that is, being able to articulate the principles
> that determine its use has proven challenging even to advanced
> linguistic theorists (though progress has been made). But this is not
> the same thing as the ability to use these principles
> subconsciously--adult speakers of English do this unproblematically. As
> Bob points out, there must be principles that determine (and therefore
> predict) its use, or we would all be casting around using incorrect
> trouble using this construction in their writing, I would look for
> sources other than unpredictability of the construction. When do
> children master this construction in speech? To what extent is this a
> problem of learning the structure of written language and principles for
> structuring coherent written texts, rather than subconsciously mastering
> the rules for use of present perfect?
>
> It also disturbs me for someone to express the belief that 'no one
> really ever masters' the English language. One must, again, be very
> careful about whether one is speaking of metalinguistic or linguistic
> abilities--abilities to explain how the language works vs. abilities to
> just function in it. In the latter sense, all native speakers 'master'
> the language to the extent that their environment allows. In the former
> sense, however--being able to explain every detail of English
> gramar--well, linguists have been working on that for some time now, and
> a great deal is known. Yet a great deal remains to be uncovered.
>
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Johanna Rubba Assistant Professor, Linguistics
> English Department, California Polytechnic State University
> One Grand Avenue • San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
> Tel. (805)-756-2184 • Fax: (805)-756-6374 • Dept. Phone. 756-259
> • E-mail: [log in to unmask] • Home page: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
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