1) The main gate cost should be reduced, if it is decorated with the artificial flowers. the florist has given me the cost for fresh flowers. ----here what i wanted to say is that ' there is a function in November 2010 and the florist has given me the rates for gate decoration.
My question : Can i say "has given" or he gave me the cost for fresh flowers is also correct? since the function is not happened yet.........present perfect is related from past to present instances.
Please help. i know i am you irritating with all these questions............but i really want to master this language.
No, you're not irritating me.
Yes, this is exactly the time you use a perfect tense.
There has to be some logical connection between the two events - which there is here. You know the cost will be lower,
because the florist
has already given you the price.
You know
now, because something happened
before and is
completed at the index time. (They are not two unrelated events in the past.)
However, if you said, "The florist gave me the price, so I already know the cost will be lower" (all simple tenses), that's OK too, because you've explicitly explained the logical connection of one event to the other - with 'so'.
There are three perfect tenses, present perfect, past perfect, and future perfect. They all have this quality. You use them when you need to emphasize a connection between two events, not just that one happened before the other. But, there are other ways to say that one thing is dependent on another, so the perfect tenses are not always necessary.
I'll illustrate the past and future perfect with the adverbial phrase, "By the time ...", which
does require a perfect tense, because it explicitly means that one thing will be completed before another happens.
Past:
"By the time he arrived, I
had eaten lunch." (past perfect - right)
"By 2pm (past), I had eaten lunch."
* "By the time he arrived, I eat/ate lunch." Wrong.
Future:
"By the time he arrives, I
will have eaten lunch." (future perfect - right)
"By 2pm (future), I will have eaten lunch."
* "By the time he arrives, I will eat/ate lunch." Wrong.
Present:
"He arrives now, and I have eaten lunch." (present perfect - right)
"It's 2pm, and I have eaten lunch."
* "He arrives now, and I ate lunch." Wrong.
I think I wrote something else about the perfect tenses, which I can't remember now. I'll try to find it.