Perfect forms in English
I have chosen to analyze the Perfect forms in English as they have always presented difficulties to learners and also because opinions of linguists differ greatly as far as these forms are concerned The aim of my paper was, on the one hand to investigate the main peculiarities of the perfect form trying to define their basic functions, meanings and their position within the system of the English verb, and on the other hand, bringing into comparison the verb systems of the English and Romanian languages, to investigate the means by which the English perfect forms are translated into Romanian. I based my analysis on examples from “The Picture of Dorian Grey” by Oscar Wilde and its Translation into Romanian by Maziliu.
The perfect, unlike the non-perfect forms denote secondary temporal characteristics of the action. One of the most disputable questions is whether the Perfect is part of another verbal category or it is an independent grammatical category. To answer this question I start from the assumption that grammatical categories are correlated with philosophical ones. Thus while the Simple Present, Past and Future reflect the division of the objective time into Past, Present and Future, the Perfect having the meaning of time correlation like Aspect and Voice, expresses another notion. So, in the form “has spoken” we distinguish the present tense and the category of time correlation which is the perfect. According to many linguists, the perfect forms belong to the category of tense which is expressed by the same grammatical form, particularly by the present form “has”.
However, this pattern “has+ participle II” is the expression of some other grammatical meaning. We can draw here a parallel between the category of Voice and that of Time Correlation ( perfect). Thus, if we compare the grammatical form “ is made” which reveals the meaning of two different grammatical categories : Tense and Voice with the form “ has made”, the
The perfect, unlike the non-perfect forms denote secondary temporal characteristics of the action. One of the most disputable questions is whether the Perfect is part of another verbal category or it is an independent grammatical category. To answer this question I start from the assumption that grammatical categories are correlated with philosophical ones. Thus while the Simple Present, Past and Future reflect the division of the objective time into Past, Present and Future, the Perfect having the meaning of time correlation like Aspect and Voice, expresses another notion. So, in the form “has spoken” we distinguish the present tense and the category of time correlation which is the perfect. According to many linguists, the perfect forms belong to the category of tense which is expressed by the same grammatical form, particularly by the present form “has”.
However, this pattern “has+ participle II” is the expression of some other grammatical meaning. We can draw here a parallel between the category of Voice and that of Time Correlation ( perfect). Thus, if we compare the grammatical form “ is made” which reveals the meaning of two different grammatical categories : Tense and Voice with the form “ has made”, the