English grammar - Roger Berry 2012
B5.2 Aspect
B5 The meanings of tense and aspect
Section B Development
Aspect is the name given to verb choices which involve the addition of auxiliaries to complete a verb phrase, as opposed to the inflections which indicate tense. The construction of aspectual forms is described in A6. We saw in A5 that in common pedagogic parlance aspect is included in tense, but on a scientific level the two need to be distinguished both formally and semantically.
Aspect involves how events relate to times in addition to their exact timing, i.e.
□ how an event or state relates to the surrounding time periods
□ whether an event or state has relevance to another, later, point in time
There are three aspects (excluding the ’simple’ forms):
□ progressive (continuous): I am singing./ They were walking.
□ perfect: I have sung. / They had walked.
□ perfect progressive: I have been singing./ They had been walking.
All three can combine with both past and present tenses, as the pairs of examples show. The progressive and perfect aspects are discussed below. It is worth noting that
the vast majority of finite verb phrases in English consist of simple forms (i.e. present or past tenses); the perfect and progressive aspects are fairly rare, while the perfect progressive aspect is very rare.
The progressive aspect
Leaving aside the future use (as discussed in A5; see also D5), progressive forms are often said to refer to a lasting or continuous state or activity:
He’ standing outside the door.
I was talking about something else.
She’ been speaking for 45 minutes.
However, we need to recognise that simple verb forms can also refer to lasting states. For example
I live in Paris.
appears to be more ’lasting’ than
I’m living in Paris.
which suggests a temporary state.
There are other problems with the idea of duration or continuity, as with these examples:
He’ been ringing me all day.
You’ve been telling lies.
Here, rather than a continuous action we are more likely to give an ’iterative’ (or ’repeated’) interpretation. But this has little to do with the aspect; it is more to do with the semantic nature of the verb; ’ringing’ and ’telling lies’ are things we do in short bursts, not over long periods, whereas by contrast
She’ been walking all day
could be continuous, because of the nature of walking.
Rather than focusing on a period of time, what the progressive does is focus on a point (the present or past, as specified by the tense) within a period of time. It says ’think about the action at a certain point in time, but don’t forget the time before and after’. Thus the progressive aspect often has the idea of dropping the reader or listener into something in progress, bringing an activity to life, making it more ’vivid’:
We jumped into the water and a moment later we were being carried downstream. It would be perfectly possible to say we were carried downstream, as a completed action, but the progressive form tries to make the reader picture the activity in progress. So with the above examples (I live in Paris / I’m living in Paris), the latter tries to make the ’living’ more an activity than a state, hence its shorter duration.
Terminology
You will have noticed that I have used the term ’progressive’ instead of ’continuous’ to describe these verb forms, even though the latter is more common in some circles. This is because I feel that ’progressive’ is a better term, because ’continuous’ could be misleading. We have seen a number of situations where an action is not continuous, or where a simple form could be used for something ’continuous’.
The perfect aspect
Perfect forms relate past events and states to the present time (present perfect) or to a subsequent point of time in the past (past perfect). The relationship may involve:
□ a completed action or state with a relevance to the present (or past): I’ve hidden the presents.
□ an action or state lasting up to the present (or past): You’ve drunk enough.
□ an accumulation of experience: I’ve met many diplomats.
Activity B5.3
Consider this joke, told by Groucho Marks, a well-known comedian, in a film. As he is leaving a party, he says to the hostess: ’I’ve had a wonderful evening’. She is very happy when she hears this, but then he continues ’But this wasn’t it!’ What two meanings of the present perfect are involved in this ’misunderstanding’?
Activity B5.4a
Match these present perfect forms to their meaning:
a) I’m afraid you’re too late; they’ve gone.
b) I’ve been to Hong Kong lots of times.
c) I can see you’ve been playing football.
1. past activity, present relevance
2. past action, present relevance
3. accumulation of experience
Activity B5.4b
We can often make a statement about the present based on a present perfect tense. Take the three sentences in Activity B5.4a and, using the present tense, write a sentence which contains an implication based on the original.
Comparing the present perfect and the past tense
One of the hardest tasks for learners of English is to decide between these two forms, since both commonly refer to past time. However, the past tense, as we saw, refers to specific past times unconnected with the present; the present perfect is more general, referring to a time frame that extends from a point in the past up to the present.
In fact, though, the difference between the two is not absolute; it is not determined objectively by the time and time relationships. The same event can be construed with both the present perfect and past:
Widdowson (1999) claimed that . . .
Widdowson (1999) has claimed that . . .
The choice here depends on whether we think that the claim still ’affects’ the present.
VARIATION IN ENGLISH
The adverbs yet and already are used differently in British and American English when referring to past time:
American: Did you see the film yet/already? (past tense)
British: Have you seen the film yet/already? (present perfect)
This again suggests that the difference between the past tense and present perfect is not absolute.