English: I've broken or I broke

[aaleks]

To use the simple past here, "your grandmother died", would be colder, putting more distance between you and your grandpa.

This! This is another great explanation of yours .

[Cainntear]

Every year they go to Switzerland in the summer to do collect data, and then in the autumn they return to the US to analyze the data they've collected. They spend the winter writing articles for scientific journals, etc. They then do a tour of conferences before the next year begins.
Here, we drop "they've collected" because the autumn is not the summer -- the data was collected in the summer, which is over and done with.

Normally I'm fairly confident that I know how to use the verbs in English, but sometimes I'm in doubt, so here is a question for ye native speakers: could you use the preterite here? I.e.: Every year they go to Switzerland in the summer to do collect data, and then in the autumn they return to the US to analyze the data they collected. Would it be allowed in some dialects and not in others? And what's the "do" good for?

Sorry -- the source of the do was "do fieldwork" and I think I'd decided to recast it as "collect data" as it felt more natural to me. I only deleted "fieldwork" and forgot to delete "do"!



( But for AvidLearner#'s benefit... notice that I wrote this post absolutely spontaneously, and I used a past perfect vs past simple consequence to encode a sequence of cause and effect. )

[Iversen]

fine, things happen .. but what about the preterite? My own personal feeling its that using preterite here marks it as just 'same procedure as last year' - and of course it couldn't be different. He/she/they would always return with some data, and they would always be analyzed in the States, not in the Swiss Confederation.

PS: I know that using "they" about single persons of undisclosed gender has become accepted by the Anglophones, but I'm not not going to budge - I'm not going to use it. And yes, pluralis maiestatis is just as illogical, but we have had several hundred years to become accostumed to that practice (more than 900 years) - and I still don't like it.

[Cainntear]

The present perfect is a grammatical combination of the present tense and perfect aspect that is used to express a past event that has present consequences.

I think the above is a good explanation of how the present perfect is used.

No, this explanation is not good. When you are an English learner trying to figure out the difference between the Present Perfect and Past Simple this explanation does nothing but confuse you. The problem is that practically any past event has present consequences. Later in your post you wrote: '"Present consequences", at least in the mind/psychology/perspective of the speaker.' IMO, this is the most important part that unfortunately seems to never make its way to English teaching textbooks.

You know I love you and the following is only to help in understanding of how I think of "present perfect". Maybe someone will find it helpful.

I think you're missing the point of aaleks's message.

He was saying "past with present consequence" is too incomplete, and I think he's actually right, and I was already inclined to understand because I'd realised that my notion of consequences was slightly off and had led to some explanation.

He pointed out that

Later in your post you wrote: '"Present consequences", at least in the mind/psychology/perspective of the speaker.' IMO, this is the most important part that unfortunately seems to never make its way to English teaching textbooks.

and he was trying to point out that the description you claimed was a good explanation, because in order to capture its meaning, you were forced to add to the explanation.

So your actual understanding of the present perfect wasn't in question -- it was clear aaleks agreed you had understood it.

The whole things actually trickier pragmatics than people give it credit for.

If you break the news of a bereavement in the form
"your grandmother died",
it's less caring that
"your grand mother has died",
because the former essentially encodes a sense that the speaker doesn't believe the listener will be affected by this, whereas with the latter, the clear implication is that the listener is likely to be affected personally.

Note that this pragmatic concern doesn't follow through if a time period has been mentioned:
"Your grandmother died in her sleep last night" is acceptable, but
"*Your grandmother has died in her sleep last night" is clearly wrong

But actually the pragmatics come back in in the fact that you're actually more likely to say:
"Your grandmother has died. She passed away in her sleep last night."
This gives you the opportunity to recognise the personal angle of bereavement by using the present perfect in the first sentence and also to specify the time period of the death in the second.

This is probably why UK headlines about deaths can at first glance be quite imprecise in the first mention -- Peter Whatsisname has died; Princess Whatdjacallher has died etc. The alternative is to use the present tense for even more immediacy, eg Mikhael Gorbachev dies... aged 91... but notice how the discussion of his death uses the present perfect. Compare this with how CNN switches from a headline Ronald Reagan dies at 93 to a story in the past simple.

I reckon that's actually a pretty good demonstration of the loss of present perfect in US English and its pragmatic effects.

[Cainntear]

fine, things happen .. but what about the preterite? My own personal feeling its that using preterite here marks it as just 'same procedure as last year' - and of course it couldn't be different. He/she/they would always return with some data.

If you start a sentence with "Every year...", it clearly marks a habitual aspect. If you have the past tense, it's past habitual, if you have the present tense it's present habitual.

"Every year they collected data in Switzerland then returned to the US to analyse it." => they have stopped this habitual practice; they used to do this.
"Every year they collect data in Switzerland then return to the US to analyse it." => this habitual practice still describes their general behaviour.

Habitual aspect isn't really talked about in English because there's a belief it doesn't exist as a verb form, but it reasly does. Consider:
I go to France
To a native speaker's ear, that is immediately understood as habitual. Responses could be "how often?" or "do you go every year or just from time to time?"

The real present isn't the so-called "present simple" but the present continuous, and the "present simple" should really be called the present continuous. Just because stative verbs have no common continuous aspect doesn't mean phrases like "I love you" don't imply habitual truth of the verb.

[Cainntear]

PS: I know that using "they" about single persons of undisclosed gender has become accepted by the Anglophones, but I'm not not going to budge - I'm not going to use it.

The thing is it has always been used to describe a theoretical unknown person.

"Who was at the door?" "I don't know, they left before I got there." (Neither of us know the person in question)
"Have you seen a doctor? What did they say?" (Speaker doesn't know the person whether the listener saw anyone, never mind who they might have seen.)
"I spoke to a shrink. He/she//they said I'm suffering from depression." (Here, anything's acceptable. To me, the act of saying "he" or "she" would be an act of giving information about the shrink's identity,; the act of saying "they" implies "who it was doesn't matter" and/or "you don't know the person".

And yes, pluralis maiestatis is just as illogical, but we have had several hundred years to become accostumed to that practice (more than 900 years) - and I still don't like it.

It's a logical extension of the "tu"/"vous" distinction. If plurality means seniority, someone who is (legally, constitutionally) considered superior to everyone they speak to can use a 1st person plural pronoun.

[aaleks]

I think you're missing the point of aaleks's message.

He was saying ....

Just in case, I am she.

[Cainntear]

I think you're missing the point of aaleks's message.

He was saying ....

Just in case, I am she.

Blame Iversen for making me self-conscious about using "they" then...

[luke]

CNN switches from a headline Ronald Reagan dies at 93 to a story in the past simple.

I reckon that's actually a pretty good demonstration of the loss of present perfect in US English and its pragmatic effects.

Newspaper writing, and in particular headlines, are a specific case. I wouldn't expect a newspaper to have an emotional outpouring in an article about the death of an ex-president. There may be sensationalism and charged words and a more officious or academic tone than would be used by his wife, children, and grandchildren about the same event.

To quote a great America writer anthropomorphizing the present perfect:

twain.png

[Iversen]

"Who was at the door?" "I don't know, they left before I got there." (Neither of us know the person in question)

... but here it could be more than one person.

"Have you seen a doctor? What did they say?" (Speaker doesn't know the person whether the listener saw anyone, never mind who they might have seen.)

Less so - although you could refer to the doctor and his/her entourage

"I spoke to a shrink. He/she//they said I'm suffering from depression." (Here, anything's acceptable. To me, the act of saying "he" or "she" would be an act of giving information about the shrink's identity,; the act of saying "they" implies "who it was doesn't matter" and/or "you don't know the person".

Even less likely: if you personally have consulted a shrink you would almost certainly know the person's gender

And yes, pluralis maiestatis is just as illogical, but we have had several hundred years to become accostumed to that practice (more than 900 years) - and I still don't like it.

It's a logical extension of the "tu"/"vous" distinction. If plurality means seniority, someone who is (legally, constitutionally) considered superior to everyone they speak to can use a 1st person plural pronoun.

It's an extension, but not logical - although you could argue that the king og queen or whatever was speaking on behalf of him/herself and the rest of the court (or the whole country). And why should seniority imply dissociative identity disorder? To me it's just a way for royalty to claim their superiority over ordinary mortals. And "they" for "he or she" is just a way to live with the lack of a gender neutral pronoun. But still not logical...

PS: sorry for derailing the discussion. We should not do that...

PSPS: ... and therefore I could like to venture a theory about the present tense while referring to the death of famous people: the media like to pretend that they report as things happen. But when they then deal with the details they can't get away with that, and they have to use the past tenses..