[stylist] Past Simple and Perfect Usage

Tue Jun 8 22:25:21 UTC 2010

Hi Angela,
The past and past perfect tenses give you a way of differentiating 
between something that happened and something else that happened before 
that point. "When I was six, we lived (past tense) in Palmer township. 
We had moved (past perfect) there when I was three." I don't remember 
specifically calling it "simple" though that's just as good a word as any.

If you are talking about the errands you did yesterday, you might say, 
"I went to the store yesterday. I had already been to the doctor's."

There's also a future perfect tense to indicate a point in the future 
when something is already in the past, "By next Tuesday, I will have 
talked to several people about this."

And, of course, there is a present perfect, "I have taken care of that." 
"I have talked to him about this." "He has been a member of NFB for ten 
years." This is the one which confuses me the most. After all, it's 
present tense but clearly all of the actions were at least initiated in 
the past. The best way I can describe the connection here is that the 
present perfect is used to suggest an ongoing state. It's easy to see it 
in the sentence in which the man has been a member for ten years. The 
other sentences present me with a bit more of a challenge to explain. 
Think of the difference in these sentences: I took care of that 
problem."  "I have taken care of that problem." " Both sentences are 
correct and essentially have the same meaning. Saying it in the past 
tense, however, has a sense of fait accompli. Using the present perfect 
suggests to me that there is still a sense of basking in the 
accomplishment. With the sentences "I have talked to him about that" and 
it's simple past cousin "I talked to him about that," the first one 
conjures up images of an ongoing frustration. "John is having problems 
with Mark's drinking, and I have talked to Mark about that." It's like 
the futility is still hanging in the air. If I say, "John is having 
problems with Marks drinking, I talked to Mark about that," I get the 
sense that the speaker has either washed their hands of the matter or 
believes their talk made a difference.

These little nuances of meaning and inference -- my interpretation is 
probably not the same as someone elses's -- are IMO what makes it so 
challenging to communicate. When we talk face to face or on the phone, 
our tone of voice, inflection and body language help sort out the 
subtleties, but the written word stands without such helpers.

Perhaps someone else will weigh in on this.

In all three perfect tenses, some form of "to have" is used in 
conjunction with the past participle of a verb.
HTH,
Donna

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On 6/8/2010 1:50 PM, Angela Fowler wrote:
> Whoa, this one's over my head. Obviously the past simple and past perfect
> are forms of the past tense, but what is the difference between the two?
> Angela
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org  [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
> Behalf Of Neil Butters
> Sent: Tuesday, June 08, 2010 10:06 AM
> To:stylist at nfbnet.org
> Subject: [stylist] Past Simple and Perfect Usage
>
> Hello All,
>
> I have  a question about using the past simple and past perfect. I know that
> when a story is told in the past simple, flashbacks or anything else that
> took place previously use the past perfect. But I have read many stories
> told in the past simple that abandon that rule in flashback paragraphs.
> Typically, the author switches from the perfect to simple in the same
> paragraph even though the whole thing describes a past event. Here is an
> example from The Last Great Clown Hunt, a story told in the past simple:
>
> I had glimpsed the stilt dancers only once. Billy Boy and I were watching
> them through a gap in the big top when the shaman caught us. He ran me off;
> he allowed Billy Boy to stay. I still had a hard time picturing Billy Boy as
> one of them. To me he'd always seemed like a clown wannabe.
>
> So why is the past perfect used in the first sentence, "I had glimpsed," but
> not in subsequenbt sentences? Why not "Billy Boy and I had watched...?" Or
> "he had allowed...?"
>
> Thanks for the help.
>
> Neil
>
>
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