A little English question.
- Thread starter Azza
- Start date
Fair enough, but how is:
'Rachel loves music'
Less perfect present than:
'Has wanted to learn to play the violin for years '?
The latter does not imply she still wants to play violin currently, it's open ended.. She may have learned to play the violin, or she may have decided the cello was a better instrument.. The text does not explain these possibilities.
'Rachel loves music'
Less perfect present than:
'Has wanted to learn to play the violin for years '?
The latter does not imply she still wants to play violin currently, it's open ended.. She may have learned to play the violin, or she may have decided the cello was a better instrument.. The text does not explain these possibilities.
Soldato
- Joined
- 31 May 2009
- Posts
- 21,468
Has is present tense afaik.
I believe your sentence should be rewritten.
-edit Rachel loves music is present tense surely? No 'perfect' needed.
The present tense of the verb 'wanted' is 'wants', surely?
'Has' is also past tense in this example, not possessive as in johnny has a ball..
"Rachel loves music" just means she currently loves music, nothing else, we have no idea if she used to love music (I assume she did).
We know Rachel still wants to learn to play the violin, if she no longer wished to (for whatever reason), the sentence would have been structured "had wanted to learn..." or "wanted to learn..."
The present perfect requires two verbs, not just one. Both "has" and "wanted" combine to form the present perfect.
Present perfect has nothing to do with the present, it is about an action in the past that happened before the present, but at an unknown time.
"has wanted" are the present perfect verbs, there is always 2 (the first typically being have, e.g. have seen, have been, have grown")
I don't think wanting can be used as a verb? Wanting is a descriptive word so must be an adjective.
Yeh but 'has' is also past tense in this example as in 'has been' not 'currently wants'?
So it's two words in past tense imo?
We use the Present Perfect to say that an action happened at an unspecified time before now. The exact time is not important. You CANNOT use the Present Perfect with specific time expressions such as: yesterday, one year ago, last week, when I was a child, when I lived in Japan, at that moment, that day, one day, etc. We CAN use the Present Perfect with unspecific expressions such as: ever, never, once, many times, several times, before, so far, already, yet, etc.
Examples:
I have seen that movie twenty times.
I think I have met him once before.
There have been many earthquakes in California.
People have traveled to the Moon.
People have not traveled to Mars.
Have you read the book yet?
Nobody has ever climbed that mountain.
A: Has there ever been a war in the United States?
B: Yes, there has been a war in the United States.
http://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/presentperfect.html
The present tense would be 'wants'.
I was wanting/I wanted to post that "wanted" could be used as a past tense and past participle but I decided not to and I had a beer instead.
I've realised now, 'wanting' is actually the present participle form of 'want'.
That's a sentence to set off the grammar Nazis' lol
I'm not the best at English grammar so this thread has been enlightening! I think I'll stick to my programming though, much easier...
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