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The imperfect present perfect has me perfectly perturbed

By RUSSELL SMITH

Globe and Mail, Thursday, September 22, 2005 Page R1

Signs in city parking lots say: "Did you remember your ticket?" I pass
these signs with a niggling unease, a discomfort that verges on irritation.
Not because I have forgotten my ticket, but because there is a vagueness in
the sentence. The sentence is not grammatically incorrect, it's just not
nuanced. It's not elegant. I am troubled because I want to know what time
in my life it's referring to. Did I forget my ticket yesterday? Or does it
mean now? In which case it should read, "Have you remembered your ticket?"

But this would involve the use of a verb tense which is disappearing from
current English. It's me who's out of date, not the sign. Everyone
understands the sign. So do I, to be honest -- I just want it to be more
elegant, more nuanced. My urge to correct it is like the urge to straighten
a picture frame in someone else's house: It's an aesthetic one.

I want the sign to use a verb tense called the present perfect. This is a
tense that people use less and less, and I understand why. A difficult
tense to master even for native speakers, it has proved too complex for a
culture which must constantly absorb new speakers of the language.

In my Oxford Pocket English Grammar, there are seven pages of explanations,
examples and special uses of the present perfect.

Basically, it works this way: you use the simple past ("I ate") when you
are referring to a specific moment which is now passed. You use the present
perfect ("I have eaten") when you are referring to a past action whose time
is not definite.

You don't say "I have eaten yesterday," you say "I ate yesterday" because
you are defining exactly when. But if you are referring to your level of
hunger right now, you say "I have eaten."

This is technically a past tense, but really it refers to a present state:
You are in the state of having eaten.

It gets really confusing, if you are just learning English. Compare the
sentences: "I haven't eaten this morning" and "I didn't eat this morning."
The first sentence means that it is still morning. The second means that it
is now after noon.

So the question about the parking ticket should really read, "Have you
forgotten your ticket?" because it is referring to your current state (do
you have your ticket with you?).

Of course everybody still understands the message, no matter the tense.
Which is why that particular subtlety is disappearing: It appears to be
unnecessary. And so it is common, in North America at least, to say, at 8
o'clock in the evening "Did you eat?" (meaning "have you eaten yet?").
Indeed, most other languages don't have this tense (even the French pass?
compos?, which has the same structure, has the same meaning as the simple
past).

Similarly, as I've written before, we don't seem to need complicated
conditional structures any more.

The sentence "If I had eaten, I wouldn't be so light-headed," appears to be
an unfathomable puzzle for many native speakers of English. It is more
common, even in the broadcast media, even among politicians and leaders of
business, to say "If I would have eaten . . ." or "If I had've eaten . .
."or something similarly inventive.

The most difficult verb for most people to learn in this context appears to
be "to go": The past participle, "gone", is getting a serious run for its
money from its new rival, "went". Even in the media, one now hears
frequently "I would have went" or "I had went."

The problem is not that the received structure is changing, which it will
inevitably do, but that while it is in transition there is no one structure
that seems accepted by everyone. So we just make up tenses and appropriate
auxiliaries as we go along. Everyone gets to speak an idiolect.

If there is one simple structure which seems set to replace this
complicated convention, it is an all-purpose present. This is particularly
beloved of sports fans who hear their TV commentators talking this way: "He
throws to Rice on that last play, they have six points right now." Very
effective, very masculine. You can even skip the "if" and the meaning is
still clear.

I wonder if those parking lot signs will soon read this way: "Remember
ticket?" I could save a lot of time and effort by writing this way, too.
And I could simplify the way the world is, too. I could stop saying "I
could." I say I simplify complicated world, I speak more definite and
clear. I put everything in present, I have no need to think about
complicated possibilities. I see sign in parking lot, I not feel
comfortable. I not understand temporal framework of question. Simplify
everything, though, and I not need to worry. I think in present from now
on. All is present: past, future, hypothetical past, possible future. All
is now. I have ticket. I have ticket now.