Present Perfect Research Articles

The Effect of Audio-Assisted Reading on Incidental Learning of Present Perfect by EFL Learners

Abstract This study applies audio-assisted reading (AAR), a technique that provides multimedia input, to encourage incidental learning of the present perfect tense. The decision to choose this tense was informed by previous studies, which have shown that its multifunctional nature presents EFL learners with considerable challenges. Thirty-four Iranian EFL learners recruited through convenience sampling participated in this eight-week-long research. The learners were assigned to the experimental and control groups. The experimental group received the AAR instruction while the control group received reading-only instruction. The analysis of the data collected through pre-test, post-test, and delayed post-test indicated that the learners not only learned the target grammar structure significantly better through AAR, but also retained it longer. The findings of the study and the implications for language teaching and learning are discussed.

Tense Errors in Albanian Speakers Learning English (L2)

Albanian students learning English as a Second Language (ESL) face considerable challenges with the English tense system due to significant grammatical differences between the two languages. This study examines the specific difficulties that Albanian ESL learners in Kosovo experience with tense usage, drawing on responses from both questionnaires and written compositions. The results reveal a high frequency of errors, particularly in the Past Simple, Present Simple, Present Perfect, Past Perfect, and Future Simple tenses. The most common errors were related to incorrect tense construction. The frequent mistakes in the Past and Present Simple tenses suggest that native language interference and the overgeneralization of English rules contribute significantly to the learners' struggles. The study calls for further research, especially longitudinal and oral-based studies, to better understand these issues and to develop more effective teaching strategies to help Albanian learners improve their command of English tenses.

The Acquisition of Present Perfect by English Language Learners: A Comparative Study

The Acquisition of Present Perfect by English Language Learners: A Comparative Study

Decoding French equivalents of the English present perfect: evidence from parallel corpora of parliamentary documents

Abstract Scholars have yet to establish a consensus regarding French equivalents of the English present perfect (PP). This study investigates the French equivalents of the PP through the lens of parallel corpora. Although the passé composé is commonly considered the French equivalent, no singular tense in French entirely mirrors the PP. This paper challenges this assumption by suggesting other French forms as viable correspondences, including the présent de l’indicatif, the passé récent, the futur antérieur, and the imparfait. Leveraging the benefits of parallel corpora for crosslinguistic analysis, these forms were scrutinized in relation to their function and application across different uses of the PP. The findings provide empirical evidence that enriches the understanding of the crosslinguistic complexity between the PP and its French equivalents, offering valuable insights for foreign language learning, teaching, and translation. The study also stresses the importance of interpretations of tense equivalences in the pursuit of successful crosslinguistic communication.

L1 Influence on the Use of the English Present Perfect: A Corpus Analysis of Russian and Spanish Learners’ Essays

Background: Mastering verbal tenses, especially those expressing aspect, in a second language presents a challenge as learners frequently link the semantic nuances of verbal forms in their second language (L2) to the characteristics of the verbal systems in their native languages (L1). This study explores the impact of L1 on the usage of the English Present Perfect (PP) among non-native speakers. Purpose: In an effort to contribute to the ongoing research on the mechanisms governing the acquisition of English tenses, this study focuses on the variations that affect the usage of the PP in the writing of English learners. The investigation is particularly centered on university students whose L1 is Russian and Spanish, seeking to delve into the ways in which their first language influences the utilisation of the PP in their English writing. Method: Analysis of L2 English by Russian and Spanish learners, based on corpora of argumentative essays written by undergraduate Russian and Spanish learners of English, controlled by a corpus of essays produced by native speakers of English; frequency and distribution of the PP in learner writings; examination of semantic contexts; identification of error types. Results: The findings indicate that, despite a higher occurrence of the PP in texts produced by Spanish learners compared to Russian learners, the rate of errors in its application is nearly identical in both learner corpora. These errors are likely attributable to challenges in comprehending the functions of the PP and in distinguishing its semantics from those of other English tenses, particularly the Past Simple. Conclusion: The study suggests that the increased prevalence of PP usage by L2 learners may be attributed to positive transfer from their L1 when it exhibits structures analogous to the English PP. Conversely, patterns indicative of, for example, undergeneralisation of semantic contexts suggesting the relevance of an action, or of overgeneralisation of adverbs compatible with the PP can be interpreted as evidence of negative transfer. The results of this study hold significance for language pedagogy, as they highlight potential challenges in acquiring the PP that learners from diverse L1 backgrounds may encounter.

Actualization of the Future Meaning in English Literary Discourse

The article provides a comprehensive analysis of linguistic means that serve to express the future meaning in English. The material for the study was the direct speech of a novel written by a British author, from which 1,695 examples containing predicative grammatical and lexico-grammatical units with the future meaning were extracted by continuous sampling. The study of the extracted language units was carried out using componential, distributive, contextual and quantitative analyses. The results of the study revealed a significant repertoire of linguistic means, expressing the future meaning with varying degrees of discreteness. Among the grammatical forms of the indicative mood, Future Indefinite and Present Indefinite were the most frequent; among the forms of the subjunctive mood, the form would + infinitive was in the lead. The imperative mood showed a very high frequency, being the most common grammatical means in the contexts of the future meaning. Of the lexico-grammatical means (represented by biverbal constructions), be going to + infinitive and can + infinitive were quite frequent. The Continuous and Perfect forms turned out to be much less common. It was also found that when used in contexts of the future meaning, the grammatical Continuous forms partially lose the semantics of duration, and the Perfect forms partially lose the semantics of completeness, which leads to a certain neutralization of their aspectual characteristics. Grammatical forms with the primary future meaning tended to be used as absolute tenses, while forms with the secondary future meaning — such as Present Indefinite, Present Perfect, Past Subjunctive — tended to express relative temporal semantics in dependent predication.

Семантика и контекст употребления перфекта в современном американском английском: корпусное исследование

The article identifies the main ways in which the Present Perfect meanings are expressed in the oral speech of the US citizens speaking American English. The necessity to study in detail how the Present Perfect functions in modern American English is attributed to the emerging reports emphasizing the existing functional instability of these forms in the speech of Americans. This tendency shows that the Present Perfect loses its ability to express traditional perfect meanings. Therefore, the aim of the study is twofold: to apply the methods of corpus linguistics in order to confirm that the semantics of the perfect and preterite forms tend to merge in modern American English, as well as to collect and describe the contexts in which the preterite substitutes the Present Perfect forms in their traditional meanings. We created a corpus of oral texts and collected the data reflecting the frequency of the perfect and preterite forms found in the speech of the respondents. Based on the comparative analysis, we carried out the research determining the percentage ratio of the perfect meanings expressed by the preterite forms. It was found that today in the oral speech of the US women aged 18–25 the preterite verb forms substitute the perfect verb forms in their traditional meanings in almost a third of the contexts. At the same time, the preterite replaces the perfect only in its ‘stative’ and ‘existential’ meanings. The findings confirm the hypothesis that the Present Perfect evolves in American English in accordance with the scenario of “arrested” grammaticalization where the semantics of the perfect and the preterite merge.

A New Conception оf the Bulgarian Present Perfect: Performing Structural Functions, Encoding Non-Witnessing

A New Conception оf the Bulgarian Present Perfect: Performing Structural Functions, Encoding Non-Witnessing

The Analysis of American and British English's Vocabularies

The analysis of American and British English's Vocabularies. The purpose of thisresearch was to find out and analyze the vocabularies in American English andBritish English. The research was held by using the qualitative descriptive analysismethod and library research where data made in form of words, sentences,quotations or definitions by using the sources of data from books, articles alsojournals which the data related to the analysis. It was found from the research thatalthough there were similarities between American and British English but it wasalso found the differences, that is : (1). Past and Past Participle Forms of Verb, (2).Past Simple Vs Present Perfect, (3). Subject-verb Agreement, (4). Prepositions, (5).Vocabulary Differences, (6). Writing Dates, (7). Articles, (8). Auxiliary verbs, (9).Tag questions and (10). Spelling, (11). Punctuation, (12). StressKeywords : Vocabularies, American English, British English

Perfect variations in dialogue: a parallel corpus approach

The variation in distribution and meaning of the English Present Perfect compared to its counterparts in other European languages raises a puzzle for the cross-linguistic semantics and pragmatics of tense and aspect. We apply Translation Mining, a form-based approach, to analyze the meaning of the HAVE-PERFECT across languages in a parallel corpus based on "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" and its translations in Swedish, Spanish, Dutch, German and French. We use the alternation in the Harry Potter novel between narrative discourse (storytelling) and dialogue (the characters talking to each other) to establish the PERFECT as an indexical tense-aspect category that appears exclusively in dialogue. We then link the proposed information management roles of the Present Perfect (Portner 2003, Nishiyama & Koenig 2010) to moves in the language game. We find different distributions of PERFECT use across the sentence types corresponding to these moves (declarative vs. interrogative). This lends support to a cross-linguistically common rhetorical structure in sequences of PERFECT sentences (de Swart 2007).

Narrating the Past in Different Contexts: C-BI Approach to the Present Perfect and Past Simple

Abstract Concept-based instruction (C-BI) has proven to be effective in improving students’ command of grammar items used out of context by offering the students revision lessons, but its effect in teaching newly-introduced grammar items in a complex context of a specific genre remains unclear. To probe C-BI’s effect on students’ use of the past simple and present perfect tenses out of context and in the context of a narrative by its description of the grammar concept in its materialization, that is, the Schemas of a Complete Orienting Basis of an Action (SCOBAs), we taught the two tenses to 40 eighth-graders in a Chinese middle school in our three-week teaching experiment. The qualitative and quantitative analysis of the results shows that i) in both out-of-context use and in-context use, accuracy of using the target tenses is higher after C-BI intervention; ii) by improving their conceptual knowledge through C-BI, the students are helped to pin down reference time and are hence more certain in using the target tenses. Moreover, they are encouraged to use the newly-introduced tenses in the complex context of the narrative genre; iii) both in simple contexts or complex contexts, the SCOBAs are effective in helping students navigate the learning task and determine their intended meaning by establishing temporal reference in the context.

Grammaticalization in the Evidential pathway of the Andean Spanish Present Perfect

This work examines the development of the Spanish Present Perfect (PP) in an excolonial region where Spanish is in contact with Amerindian languages and argues for the inclusion of linguistic factors connected to ‘subjectivity’ and ‘information structure’ in the study of the PP, alongside the traditional temporal and aspectual factors. Perfects in the world’s languages derive from three main sources (BE/HAVE, COME, FINISH, Bybee, Perkins & Pagliuca 1994), but HAVE perfects (e.g., Spanish) are considered the least common pattern (WALS, Dahl & Velupillai 2013; Drinka 2017). Bybee et al. (1994) posit that only the stative source branches into two distinct grammaticalization pathways of the PP: the temporal (towards past/perfective) or the evidential (leading to (in)direct evidential). There are exceptions to the temporal pathway in Romance: Daca-Romanian (Drinka 2017), Judeo-Spanish (Varol 2006), and Andean Spanish varieties (Escobar & Crespo del Río 2021) are argued to follow the evidential path that is in each case triggered by contact with a language or languages of families (Turkic or Quechumaran) that have evidential markers. Through detailed grammatical analyses of data from semi-structured conversations, the effects of subjectivity and information structure on the grammaticalization pathway of the PP in Andean Spanish varieties are established.

Towards Better Understanding of Present Perfect Characteristics and Usage – Professional Insight and Suggestion

Taking into consideration delicate nature of translation, and the fact that the process could easily trigger (both positive and negative) language transfer, this paper aims to shed some light on the status of the Present Perfect Tense in the process of translating from Serbian into English. Relying on the corpora of data comprising 113 sets of sentences, translated by students majoring in English, we tried to identify how frequent the usage of Present Perfect is. Apart from that – we aimed to determine which verb forms (tenses used in context) in Serbian eventually become Present Perfect in English and whether decisions of such a kind are consistent. The qualitative analysis proved the evasive nature of English Present Perfect; namely, it was shown that, despite some lexical hints used in Serbian sentences, the usage of Present Perfect was inconsistent. In conclusion, the paper suggests the implementation of collaborative teaching practices, with the goal of activating critical thinking, and contrastive analysis and thus improving students’ understanding, as well as their active usage of acquired grammatical notions.

Perception of the English Universal Present Perfect in Polish Learners of English and British Native Speakers

It is widely considered that Polish does not possess the present perfect, and that it represents a challenge to those teaching Polish learners of English. From a teaching perspective, the question arises of what a Polish learner of English perceives when they read/hear a present perfect sentence. The research presented here attempts to answer that question, but with a focus on the universal present perfect. A questionnaire was developed to measure the perception of the English universal present perfect’s two defining features: its incompleteness and its continuability. The questionnaire was completed by Polish learners of English and a group of British native speakers. The hypotheses were: 1. Incompleteness/continuability would be perceived in the universal present perfect, 2. that lower proficiency learners would perceive incompleteness/continuability at a lower rate and perception would increase with proficiency, and 3. British native speakers would have the highest level of perception. The results show that the incompleteness/continuability of the universal present perfect are perceived. While perception decreases with lower proficiency learners, British native speakers did not have the highest levels of perception. The next step is to develop a pedagogy which focuses on perception-based teaching and carry out an experiment to analyse its efficacy.

A Study on the Use of Types of Present Perfect by Korean Adult Learners of English

This study aims to analyze the usage of the four sub-types of the English present perfect. Korean English learners tend to use the simple past when expected to use the present perfect. This study investigates which sub-types of the English present perfect Korean English learners find particularly difficult to use. The results show that Korean English learners are not very good at using all of the sub-types of the present perfect. In particular, they have difficulty using the present perfect functioned as Perfect of Result. Also, they tend to use the present perfect correctly at a relatively high rate when temporal adverbials appear in the sentence. However, they seem to have trouble using the present perfect, and they tend to use the simple past instead when there are no temporal adverbials. The findings have two implications. One is that Korean English learners show different levels of understanding depending on the sub-types of the English present perfect. The other is that Korean English learners tend to acquire the English present perfect more easily when temporal adverbials are present. This study is conducted only for Korean English learners. I hope for further research which compares Korean English learners and English native speakers. (Changshin University)

Syntactic paradigm of the English active verb cut (based on The Economist magazine)

The purpose of the study is to analyze the active verb cut in English. The article defines the models forming the synparadigma of the active verb cut, describes the semantic features of the verb, analyzes the verb cut from the point of view of its morphological categories. The author conducts a theoretical analysis of the concept of "syntactic paradigm", its differences from the morphological paradigm, and also describes various interpretations of the concept of actionality, which is important in the analysis of the syntactic paradigm of the active verb. There are a large number of points of view about what range of phenomena the concept of synparadigma covers and what is the composition of the categories significant for it. The article presents the theories of the synparadigma of D.Worth, P. Adamts. The author comes to the conclusion that the synparadigma of the active verb cut consists of 8 models: VN, VNprpN, LinkVed, Voneself, VO, VD, VNV, VNprpG. The highest frequency indicators are characterized by the VN model. An analysis of the active verb cut from the point of view of its characteristic species-specific, collateral categories and mood categories shows that the most commonly used form of the verb cut in the English-language media text is Present Indefinite and Present Perfect. Narration in the present tense provides a very strong presence effect, causes a feeling that events are happening here and now. The active verb is mainly used in the actual voice. Due to the lexical meaning, the verb cut is often used in the passive voice. The analysis of the verb along the line of the mood category revealed a large number of sentences in the indicative mood.

It’s been a while since I’ve been to church: The use of the Present Perfect after the conjunction since

ABSTRACT Previous research on the Present Perfect suggests that the latter is acceptable in since-clauses only if the situation expressed by the subordinate clause extends in time up until the present, as in Tony has been happy since he has been taking Prozac, i.e. if the Present Perfect in the since-clause is a Universal Perfect whose predication is true at all subintervals in the time-interval delimited by since and not an Existential Perfect whose predication is true only at a certain moment therein, as in *Tony has been happy since he has visited Cape Cod. The present study puts the implications of this claim and others found in the literature to the empirical test through an examination of all of the 2,621 occurrences of the Present Perfect in since-clauses with pronominal subjects in the British National Corpus and the Corpus of Contemporary American English. A significant proportion of the data is shown to contradict the generalizations proposed in previous studies. An explanation capable of accounting for all of the uses of the Present Perfect in since-clauses is put forward based on the complex meaning of this verbal structure which involves the notion of present stative after-phase of a past situation. The Present Perfect is possible in a since-clause whenever the beginning of the after-phase serves to mark the beginning-point in the past from which the main-clause situation unfolds towards the present. The beginning of the after-phase is argued to be interpretable in two ways: either as the first moment after the end of the prior situation or as the first moment in the process of accruing the after-phase itself.

The Use of English Present Perfect by Malaysian Chinese ESL Learners

The Use of English Present Perfect by Malaysian Chinese ESL Learners

The perfects in Latvian and Lithuanian: A comparative study based on questionnaire and corpus data

This paper presents a comprehensive comparative analysis of the functions of the present, past and future perfect forms in standard Latvian and Lithuanian based on two complementary types of data: the typological questionnaire devised for the study of the perfect for the EUROTYP project and the Lithuanian-Latvian parallel corpus. We analyse the data qualitatively as well as quantitatively and demonstrate that the two Baltic languages show both similarities and important differences in their perfect grams. While the Present Perfect in Latvian clearly shows a higher degree of grammaticalisation than in Lithuanian, manifested in the frequency of use, obligatoriness and functional extent, the differences betweenthe two languages in the uses of the other tenses of the perfect are more intricate and largely pertain to the expression of modal and discourse-oriented functions.

The Effects of Animation on the Explicit Instruction for Present Perfect:

The Effects of Animation on the Explicit Instruction for Present Perfect: