perfect tense

Examples

• All

• So there is considerable evidence that the 'used to' construction is akin to the present perfect tense.

  Academic text (2006)

• In English, the perfect tense is used to describe actions that have been completed at some point before now.

• If you don't know what past perfect tense is, it is when something occurred before another action in the past.

  Blog text (17)

• This is kind of subtle, but it might be a problem of the tense; if the "no regret" line were more clearly in the past perfect tense, I think it could help.

  Blog text (8)

• The distributional properties of 'used to' revealed by Tagliamonte and Lawrence are precisely those of the present perfect tense.

  Academic text (2006)

• In Venetian painting, the verb facere (to make or to do) was not commonly used except to refer to the patron "having had a work made," until the late fifteenth century, where it occasionally appears in the perfect tense fecit.

  Academic text (1998)

• The perfect tense indicates that one action occurred before another action in the past.

• A sentence in the perfect tense often includes an auxiliary verb, like 'have', followed by the past participle.

Synonyms

P

perfect

vsperfect tense

• Specialized

3 7.7

A verb tense that shows an action finished before now or before another action

is the specific tense form rather than a general aspect label

P

perfective tense

vsperfect tense

• Specialized

8.2

A verb form that shows an action has finished and focuses on the result

focuses on completed action timing rather than its resulting state

Antonyms

I

imperfect tense

• Specialized

6.3

To talk about past actions that happened often or were still happening

Surface Forms

Morphology

Etymology