[Grammar] Present Perfect vs Present Perfect Countinous

[jutfrank]

We can't say that for certain. We need more context to be 100% certain.

I have been reading 'War and Peace'. At my current rate of progress, I should have finished it by Christmas.

I have been reading 'War and Peace'. I started it in January and finally finished it last night.

In both sentences, the action is finished at the moment of speaking, whether the reader stopped doing the action (reading) one minute or one week ago.

In the first sentence, it's the book that's unfinished, not the action.

 

[Matthew Wai]

Yes, the action is finished at the time of speaking.

Why can't I say the following when I am still reading it?
"I have been reading a book for an hour."

I can read and speak at the same time.

 

[jutfrank]

Why can't I say the following when I am still reading it?
"I have been reading a book for an hour."

I can read and speak at the same time.

Okay, good point. Let me try a different explanation.

What we do when we use aspect is to set in the mind a timeframe within which actions expressed by verbs happen. The timeframe set by the present perfect is a duration that began prior to the moment of speaking and lasts until the moment of speaking. So technically, what is 'finished' is the timeframe, not the activity expressed by the verb.

So when I said "the action is finished", I should have said the timeframe encompassing the action is finished. What I meant was that because the timeframe is conceived as part of past time, not present or future, therefore the action that we are talking about when we use the present perfect aspect is necessarily located in past time too. Hence, the "action is finished at the moment of speaking". In other words, the action that is in the speaker's mind at the time of speaking is in the past.

I'm not sure I explained that very well. I understand how this is difficult to grasp.

 

[jutfrank]

You possibly didn't, any more than I did in post #16 - but yours was a good try!

Thanks.

I've been struggling with this for years. If teachers like us find it hard to explain, I can fully appreciate how hard it must be for learners.

I think that part of the problem of explaining comes from the precision (or lack thereof) of terms used. For example, here:

It emphasizes the duration.

I'd want to resist saying that it's the duration that is emphasised (if the duration is the period of time) . Rather, it's the continuity of action (and sometimes the repetition of action) within the duration, which is what is being expressed in present perfect continuous sentences.

 

[jutfrank]

I might try to come up with impressive-sounding reasons for choosing one form rather than the other, but you could almost certainly come up with equally impressive-sounding reasons for choosing the other. The more we we try to get into the mind of the speaker and the details of the context, the more we seem to be trying to formulate a rule that doesn't exist. Sometimes the choice between one tense/aspect and another is arbitrary - in my opinion.

It might come as no surprise that I disagree. One may be able to come up with reasons for choosing one form or the other, but there can only be one 'correct' reason, in my opinion. The choice of aspect that a speaker uses tells us something (in perhaps not all, but nearly all cases) about how he conceives of temporality. I can't see how such an unconscious choice can be arbitrary. For me, there's always an explanation, always an underlying principle, however hidden.

(Maybe we could exchange magnum opuses (opii?) one day? )

 

[Matthew Wai]

the timeframe encompassing the action is finished [...] the "action is finished at the moment of speaking".

I have been listening to music for an hour. Even though I am still doing so at this moment, the ongoing action of listening is considered to be finished because the timeframe encompassing the action is finished.

Have I understood correctly?

 

[jutfrank]

I have been listening to music for an hour. Even though I am still doing so at this moment, the ongoing action of listening is considered to be finished because the timeframe encompassing the action is finished.

Have I understood correctly?

Well, the timeframe is finished, yes, but as you say, you're still listening so the action is ongoing for you.

My point was that the action that is referred to in your utterance is located in the past, not your present experience. That is, when you use a present perfect sentence, you're talking about past action.

 

[Phaedrus]

- Could you tell me why there is such a bad smell in the kitchen?

- 1) I've been cooking some fish.
- 2) I've cooked some fish.

Great thread. It's inspiring me to return to tense and aspect "metaphysics"! There's no escaping it if one wants to get to the bottom of this stuff.

The point I wish to make is not metaphysical at all, and isn't particularly profound. I think the superiority of (2) in this context owes in large part to the "such a bad smell" part of the context. It tells us that the bad smell is intense. That is why we need a tense and aspect that indicate that the smell-producing situation led right up to the time of speech. The present-perfect continuous accomplishes that; the non-continuous present perfect does not.

If the smell that is to be explained were subtle rather than intense, the non-continuous present perfect would work just fine (assuming that the smell-producing situation would have produced an intense smell if it had just taken place). We would need a tense and aspect that indicate that the smell-producing situation lay at some distance from the time of speech, while still pertaining to it. The non-continuous present perfect would accomplish that.

A: The air in here seems a little polluted to me.
B: That's probably because I've smoked in here.

A: This doesn't smell like a vegetarian kitchen.
B: Generally speaking, it is. However, I have cooked fish in here.

 

[jutfrank]

If the smell that is to be explained were subtle rather than intense, the non-continuous present perfect would work just fine (assuming that the smell-producing situation would have produced an intense smell if it had just taken place). We would need a tense and aspect that indicate that the smell-producing situation lay at some distance from the time of speech, while still pertaining to it. The non-continuous present perfect would accomplish that.

A: The air in here seems a little polluted to me.
B: That's probably because I've smoked in here.

I'd explain the preference for the non-continuous (simple) form in a different way:

The explanation for the room seeming polluted is attributed to a single event in the speaker's mind (my smoking a cigarette). Although, this single event does in reality take place over the course of a few minutes, in the mind of the speaker it is conceived of as a single action located at a point in time. Thus, the simple aspect.

The continuous aspect would reveal that the explanation is attributed to either a durational event (where the event is conceived of as taking place over a length of time) or as a series of single (non-durational) events (what we tend to call repetitive actions).

A: The air in here seems a little polluted.
B: That's probably because I've been smoking in here.

Here, the implication is of more than one cigarette, i.e. several single events. If in fact there has been only one cigarette smoked, we can know that the speaker is conceiving the smoking as a durational event.

I don't think it's fundamentally about time-distance from the point of speaking at all, or the nature (intensity) of the evidence. It's about the way that we conceive of events happening in time.

Let's get metaphysical for a moment. I think an analysis of the tense/aspect system gets to the very heart of Western metaphysics. Do the different ways in which we use language to locate events in time determine how we think about time? Or does our faculty for experiencing time determine how we use language? What do we actually mean when we talk of 'events'? Does reality really consist simply of a set of events? Or is reality better viewed as one single process? Do events really take place in time? Or is our perception of time just the effect of our conception of events?