[Grammar] present perfect/past simple

[Will17]

Hello!

In this case, which tense are we supposed to use?

Have you seen/ Did you see my new ring?! (I'm showing it)

Thank you
W

 

[5jj]

Have you seen/ Did you see my new ring?! (I'm showing it)

In BrE, the present perfect is what we normally expect in such situations. However, if the speaker is wondering whether she showed the listener the ring the last time they met, the past simple is fine.

 

[Coolfootluke]

I am not a teacher.

This is the classic case of the colloquial American simple past used where the Brits instinctively use the present perfect. An American is quite likely to say, "Did you see my new ring?!" whatever she means. That doesn't make it right, though. In formal writing, even an American will put the perfect.

 

[5jj]

You are catching my typophiliac disease;-),Coolfootluke. I assume you meant 'simple past' in the first line of your post.

 

[2006]

I am not a teacher.

This is the classic case of the colloquial American simple past used where the Brits instinctively use the present perfect. An American is quite likely to say, "Did you see my new ring?!" whatever she means. That doesn't make it right, though. Are you saying 'Did you see my new ring?' is wrong? If so, how is it wrong?

(Did you see)(Have you seen) Tom's new car? :tick:

Sometimes it is the present perfect that is odd or wrong.
'Have you known that Mary is moving to Brazil?' Would anyone say that?

along with the following examples of present perfect running wild that were all written by students here and that I recently posted in another thread

I've been here for the first time.
I have seen. (to mean 'I see.')
I have understood. (to mean 'I understand.')
I have been at home last night.
Today has been six weeks since they were last seen.
I have been born in Delhi.


In formal writing, even an American will put the perfect.
If you are saying that present perfect is more formal, I won't necessarily disagree with you. Using a more complex tense can be one of the features of more formal writing. But I disagree that 'Did you see my new ring?' is incorrect in some way.

I use present perfect a lot myself, as all English speakers do.

 

[Coolfootluke]

I use present perfect a lot myself, as all English speakers do.

I am not a teacher.

Hunh. I wasn't prepared to defend my cockamamie opinions to a native speaker, but I'll do my best. What is wrong with "Did you see my ring?" is that it is in the wrong tense. I agree with Fowler that writing should yield its meaning on close examination, and the plain meaning of that question in the simple past is absurd. Say you had gone to an art museum, and when you got home you told me that you had seen a painting of a house, a painting I know well. I might ask, "Did you see the mongoose in the upstairs window?" That is the import of, "Did you see my ring?" The information desired is not solicited by a question in the simple past, as, conversely, the information I desire would not be solicited by, "Have you seen the mongoose in the upstairs window?"

 

[2006]

I am not a teacher.

What is wrong with "Did you see my ring?" is that it is in the wrong tense. You didn't say what's wrong with the tense.

You might not be surprised to hear that I still disagree with you.
The important thing is that the unjustified badmouthing of simple past tense and the overselling of present perfect tense is directly responsible for the cockamamie sentences, such as the examples I listed, that students come up with.

Having a student say "I have been born in Delhi." instead of the should-be-obvious 'I was born in Delhi.' illustrates a very very serious problem in the teaching of the two tenses.

Pity the poor students!

 

[Coolfootluke]

You might not be surprised to hear that I still disagree with you.
The important thing is that the unjustified badmouthing of simple past tense and the overselling of present perfect tense is directly responsible for the cockamamie sentences, such as the examples I listed, that students come up with.

Having a student say "I have been born in Delhi." instead of the should-be-obvious 'I was born in Delhi.' illustrates a very very serious problem in the teaching of the two tenses.

Pity the poor students!

I am not a teacher.

Boy, you really hate the present perfect. I think I stated plainly what was wrong with the simple past---the meaning is absurd. Add "yet" to the end, which is really the question, and its wrongness becomes plainer: "Did you see my ring yet?" The simple past denotes an action completed in the past, but "yet" admits of a present seeing. The semantic conflict is irreparable, and it exists even without the "yet". I am not arguing a case, I'm hanging in there explaining the obvious hoping against hope that we are talking at cross purposes.

"Have you seen my ring yet?" has at least three advantages---it is idiomatic, it avails itself of the tense designed for the purpose, and it asks the right question. Your examples of fractured English have no bearing on this case. You want us to jump out of an imaginary frying pan into a real fire.

 

[Raymott]

The important thing is that the unjustified badmouthing of simple past tense and the overselling of present perfect tense is directly responsible for the cockamamie sentences, such as the examples I listed, that students come up with.

Can you cite references, or give some evidence for that opinion?
I think a more likely reason for the problem you mention is that the present perfect tense is genuinely difficult for people whose native language has no cognate. But you acknowledge that it is used (where appropriate), so students must learn it.
There is a small area of overlap in cases such as the current one in which the vast majority of English speakers used the present perfect and find the simple past a poor second choice.

You ask for grammatical reasons why the simple past shouldn't be as acceptable here as the present perfect. Perhaps there is no grammatical argument. The best argument for teaching the present perfect is that that is what is almost universally used (certain regional dialects in Canada and the US excepted).

[Fresh material starts here, 2006. You've read all the above before]
Your one-man campaign for equal rights for the simple past in this context seems to confuse many new teachers who join here. I'm not sure if I've asked you this yet, but do you know of any grammarians, linguists or pedagogues who agree with your opinion that teaching the simple past in this context will lead to fewer mistakes in the examples you've given?

 

[2006]

I am not a teacher.

Boy, you really hate the present perfect. Get serious! I expressed no such feeling. But what I do strongly object to is the assertion that only present perfect tense is correct in sentence X when that is not true. Even 5jj, a speaker of British English and one who is fond of present perfect, accepts the use of the simple past in the OP.



I think I stated plainly what was wrong with the simple past---the meaning is absurd. I don't think you explained anything; you just made the assertion.

Add "yet" to the end, which is really the question, and its wrongness becomes plainer: irrelevant

"Did you see my ring yet?"
The simple past denotes an action completed in the past, So does present perfect in that sentence.


I'm hanging in there explaining the obvious hoping against hope that we are talking at cross purposes. Again, I don't think you explained anything!

Your examples of fractured English have no bearing on this case. I totally disagree!
Tell me why else a student would say something like "I have been born in Delhi."

It's clearly because (s)he has heard so many times.....
Simple past is wrong here; only present perfect is correct.
Simple past is wrong here; only present perfect is correct.
Simple past is wrong here; only present perfect is correct.....in cases in which that is not true

It doesn't seem that we will resolve our differences.

2006

 

[5jj]

I often find myself disagreeing with 2006 (see several other threads), but when he claims, "Even 5jj, a speaker of British English and one who is fond of present perfect, accepts the use of the simple past in the OP", (I like the 'even'), he is right. Such a use of the simple past is acceptable even in BrE in the context I suggested in post #2.

I do not think that speakers of BrE would consider it particularly natural with the addition of 'yet'; I am far from being an expert on AmE, but I am sure that I have heard such utterances from many Americans.

I don't agree that "the unjustified badmouthing of simple past tense and the overselling of present perfect tense is directly responsible for the cockamamie sentences, such as the examples I listed, that students come up with". I do, however, feel that some of us British teachers can get a little obsessive about the present perfect. There are some situations in which both tense forms are possible, and some of us insist on the present perfect unnecesarily.

 

[Raymott]

I often find myself disagreeing with 2006 (see several other threads), but when he claims, "Even 5jj, a speaker of British English and one who is fond of present perfect, accepts the use of the simple past in the OP", (I like the 'even'), he is right. Such a use of the simple past is acceptable even in BrE in the context I suggested in post #2.

From your post #2:
" However, if the speaker is wondering whether she showed the listener the ring the last time they met, the past simple is fine."
I agree. The simple past is quite correct if a specific time is given. I'd have no objection to:
A: Did I show you my ring?
B: When?
A: When we met last. Do you remember? I was showing it around at the water-cooler.


But the discussion is not about a specific time in the past. It is about whether "Did I show you my ring?" is equally as good as "Have I shown you my ring?" where no past time is mentioned or implied, and (in this incarnation of the argument) whether it is correct to teach that to international students, and incidentally, whether teaching them this will lower the rate of mistakes in the correct use of the present perfect.

PS: And whether, if it does decrease errors with the present perfect, it is a good idea to teach a regional minority usage to make the language easier to learn, despite the fact that, in most places, it sounds wrong.

 

[5jj]

From your post #2:
" However, if the speaker is wondering whether she showed the listener the ring the last time they met, the past simple is fine."
I agree. The simple past is quite correct if a specific time is given. I'd have no objection to:
A: Did I show you my ring?
B: When?
A: When we met last. Do you remember? I was showing it around at the water-cooler.

But the discussion is not about a specific time in the past. It is about whether "Did I show you my ring?" is equally as good as "Have I shown you my ring?" where no past time is mentioned or implied, and (in this incarnation of the argument) whether it is correct to teach that to international students, and incidentally, whether teaching them this will lower the rate of mistakes in the correct use of the present perfect.

I don't think the initial question was necessarily so restricted.

PS: And whether, if it does decrease errors with the present perfect, it is a good idea to teach a regional minority usage to make the language easier to learn, despite the fact that, in most places, it sounds wrong.

I would always teach the present perfect in situations such as this showing of the ring, and I would not mention the use of the past simple in some dialects unless a learner specifically asked me about it. I agree that 'where no past time is mentioned or implied, only the present perfect is natura'l in BrE.

BUT, and it's quite a big 'but':

1. It seems to me that many Americans use the past simple naturally in such situations. If I am right, then we are not talking about a regional minority use, and that deserves a mention at some time.

2. Even if I am wrong in #1, I believe that the past time is more often implied in BrE than we teachers sometimes think. If I know that I showed my ring to several people yesterday, and I know that Mary was in the room at the time, but I cannot remember whether or not she was one of the people I showed it to, then it is normal and natural for me to say, "Did you see my ring?" As I said above, I would not teach this to a learner, especially not in the early days, but if a question came up I would answer it honestly.

I am not arguing necessarily for teaching this, but I am arguing against simply dismissing it as 'wrong' in all circumstances.

 

[bhaisahab]

Having a student say "I have been born in Delhi." instead of the should-be-obvious 'I was born in Delhi.' illustrates a very very serious problem in the teaching of the two tenses.

Pity the poor students!

I'll take issue with you here. Often the inappropriate use of the present perfect, as in the example above, is the result of native language interference rather than teaching. This is the case with speakers of Hindi and French to my knowledge and, I would guess, with speakers of other languages as well.

 

[Coolfootluke]

It doesn't seem that we will resolve our differences.

I am not a teacher.

So be it.

But for anybody else reading this, an American will say, "Did you see my ring [yet]?" when she has recently become engaged and wants to show off the ring her fiance gave her. This is perfectly normal colloquial American English, in my opinion. That is not to say that the present perfect would sound at all odd to us---it would not. It is more a matter of grammatical laziness or non-fussiness in speech, and the same person who used the wrong tense in speech might never use it in writing---I, for one.

 

[5jj]

. It is more a matter of grammatical laziness or non-fussiness in speech, and the same person who used the wrong tense in speech might never use it in writing---I, for one.

I agree with most of what you have written.

However, you seem to suggest that the use of the past simple is technically/grammatically wrong, even though you and many other Americans use it, and that you would use the present perfect in writing.

Have I understood you correctly? If I have, I disagree. It seems to me that if many (most?) Americans say it naturally, then it must be acceptable.

 

[nyota]

From the learner's point of view - in Polish there's no Present Perfect and so there's always been some confusion about it, but what *I*'ve always been taught is that when you refer to a past action whose time is not mentioned, you should go for Present Perfect (unless, as fivejedjon said, the context of what happened earlier makes it clear).

Later I noticed that especially AmE speakers might use Past Simple more often on such occasions, and 'even' add yet at the end - something that might indeed be confusing for learners who have always been told that 'yet' and 'already' are Present Perfect markers. So I keep in mind that you may hear different versions, but on a test, I would go for Present Perfect, and I think I can risk saying that a number of other students would do the same.

 

[Coolfootluke]

I agree with most of what you have written.

However, you seem to suggest that the use of the past simple is technically/grammatically wrong, even though you and many other Americans use it, and that you would use the present perfect in writing.

Have I understood you correctly? If I have, I disagree. It seems to me that if many (most?) Americans say it naturally, then it must be acceptable.

I am not a teacher.

I leave matters of acceptability to you teachers, and I agree that the only measure of rightness or wrongness in English is usage. I guess I am a reluctant prescriptivist, though, because I think that it is wrong to do statistics without weighting; literate native usage will be different than other kinds. But anyway, if you ask me, I would teach an ESLer to use the present perfect, because the simple past is somewhat low register, and the present perfect does not sound at all stilted. (I am wide open to other viewpoints because I haven't heard everything.) From a strictly linguistic standpoint, I would say with no authority whatsoever that the simple past is very nearly Standard American English in this context, but not quite. It's like it's been in the waiting area at the Department of Words a long time, and its number has been called, and now it's standing in the line for the "Idiom and Usage" window.

 

[5jj]

So I keep in mind that you may hear different versions, but on a test, I would go for Present Perfect, and I think I can risk saying that a number of other students would do the same.

That seems to be a safe idea. I am not advocating the use of the past simple, merely defending it.

 

[2006]

Can you cite references, or give some evidence for that opinion? No, I can't site references; I haven't looked for them. But I'll try to explain why I say that.


I think a more likely reason for the problem you mention is that the present perfect tense is genuinely difficult for people whose native language has no cognate.
That is why it is so important that a foundation be in place before a student can understand something perhaps new and as difficult as present perfect tense.
The process of learning a language seems to be very similar to that of acquiring other skills, trades, etc. One starts with learning simple basic things, in our case things like simple present and simple past tenses. One learns what these tenses can do and also what they can't do. And then one learns about the more complicated tenses that are needed to express ideas that the simpler tenses can't.
But a student cannot learn the appropriate use of more complicated tenses well if (s)he is not first reasonably grounded in the basic tenses and knows what the basic tenses can correctly express.
And if the student is repeatedly told that "Only present perfect is correct here.'' when that infact is not true, sentence like ''I have been born in Delhi.'' will inevitably be the result.


But you acknowledge that it is used (where appropriate), so students must learn it.
There is a small area of overlap in cases such as the current one in which the vast majority of English speakers used the present perfect and find the simple past a poor second choice.

You ask for grammatical reasons why the simple past shouldn't be as acceptable here as the present perfect.
Perhaps there is no grammatical argument. noted The best argument for teaching the present perfect is that that is what is almost universally used (certain regional dialects in Canada and the US excepted). No one is saying that p p should not be taught. I am saying that it can't be effectively taught without students having a good understanding of simple past tense first. The problem is then greatly magnified by the false claims that 'only p p tense is correct here'.

Just because present perfect tense is widely used does not mean that an alternative tense, in this case simple past, is necessary wrong!

Your one-man campaign I see that fivejedjon has lent support and I thank him for that.
for equal rights for the simple past in this context If the tense is also correct, that should be acknowledged. You are free to prefer p p tense, but you are not free to say simple past is wrong just because you don't like/use it.


eems to confuse many new teachers who join here. Yes, challenging a falsehood can cause confusion, but that is unavoidable if the new teachers are to ultimately understand the truth.

I'm not sure if I've asked you this yet, but do you know of any grammarians, linguists or pedagogues Again, I haven't researched that. who agree with your opinion that teaching the simple past in this context will lead to fewer mistakes in the examples you've given? I think it is quite obvious that that would be true.
If students understand all that simple past tense can correctly express, they will say 'I was born in Delhi.', not "I have been born in Delhi."

A. Did you see Tom's new car? :tick: (Because you don't use it, doesn't mean it's wrong.)
B. I did. Wow, what a car!

2006