Definition:
An aspect of the verb expressing an action that began in the past and which has recently been completed or continues into the present.
The present perfect is formed by combining has or have with a past participle (usually a verb ending in -d, -ed, or -n).
See also:
Examples and Observations:
- "Like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free."
(Leonard Cohen, "Bird on the Wire." Songs From a Room, 1969) - "History has remembered the kings and warriors, because they destroyed; art has remembered the people, because they created."
(William Morris) - "He was a Frenchman, a melancholy-looking man. He had the appearance of one who has searched for the leak in life's gas-pipe with a lighted candle."
(P.G. Wodehouse, "The Man Who Disliked Cats") - "I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains.
I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways.
I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests."
(Bob Dylan, "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall." The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, 1963) - "Never in any case say I have lost such a thing, but I have returned it. Is your child dead? It is a return. Is your wife dead? It is a return. Are you deprived of your estate? Is not this also a return?"
(Epictetus) - "Someday when peace has returned to this odd world I want to come to London again and stand on a certain balcony on a moonlit night and look down upon the peaceful silver curve of the Thames with its dark bridges."
(Ernie Pyle, "This Dreadful Masterpiece," December 1940) - "If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."
(Henry David Thoreau) - "The prime factor which is felt to influence the use of the present perfect over the simple past is a writer's feeling that a past action is relevant to a particular current situation. This situation is to be found in the context of present perfect statements and would most naturally be expressed in the present tense. Two conditions for the use of the present perfect are then seen to be: 1) the existence of a situation to which past actions can be related, and 2) the expression of this situation in the present tense."
(Raymond H. Moy, "Contextual Factors in the Use of the Present Perfect," TESOL Quarterly, September 1977)
