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In English grammar, the pluperfect (e.g. "had written") is now usually called the past perfect, since it combines past tense with perfect aspect. (The same term is sometimes used in relation to the grammar of other languages.) English also has a past perfect progressive (or past perfect continuous) form: "had been writing".
English grammar is the ... Some aspects of gender usage in English have been ... (have/has/had written, and the perfect continuous have/has/had been ...
In English the verb "to have" is used to form the perfect and past perfect tense (I have/had killed), in Finnish the verb "to be" is used instead (minä olen/olin tappanut). Just like the present active participle, it can also be used as the subject in a sentence, except it conveys the meaning in the past tense.
Sue has been to the beach. (as above; Sue went to the beach at some time before now) Sue has been on the beach. (use of been simply as part of be; she spent time on the beach) The sentences above with the present perfect can be further compared with alternatives using the simple past, such as: My father went to Japan.
English also has a present perfect continuous (or present perfect progressive) form, which combines present tense with both perfect aspect and continuous (progressive) aspect: "I have been eating". The action is not necessarily complete; and the same is true of certain uses of the basic present perfect when the verb expresses a state or a ...
The sentence can be given as a grammatical puzzle [7] [8] [9] or an item on a test, [1] [2] for which one must find the proper punctuation to give it meaning. Hans Reichenbach used a similar sentence ("John where Jack had...") in his 1947 book Elements of Symbolic Logic as an exercise for the reader, to illustrate the different levels of language, namely object language and metalanguage.
There is a subtle difference in usage between the case where the viewpoint is from the present and the case where it is from a point in the past: have been taking classes implies that the action is not only of present relevance but is continuing to occur; in contrast, had been taking classes indicates relevance at the reference time, and allows ...
The have-perfect developed from a construction where the verb meaning have denoted possession, and the past participle was an adjective modifying the object, as in I have the work done. [15] This came to be reanalyzed, with the object becoming the object of the main verb, and the participle becoming a dependent of the have verb, as in I have ...