Perfect structures

Construction

Perfect verb forms are made with have + past participle.

• She has lost her memory. (present perfect)
• I told him that I had never heard of the place. (past perfect)
• When I went back to the village the house had been pulled down. (past perfect passive)
• We will have finished by tomorrow afternoon. (future perfect tense)
• I’m sorry to have disturbed you. (perfect infinitive)
• Having seen the film, I don’t want to read the book. (perfect -ing form)

Perfect and progressive forms can be combined.

• They have been living in Portugal for the last year. (present perfect progressive)

Terminology and use

A perfect verb form generally shows the time of an event as being earlier than some other time (past, present or future). But a perfect does not only show the time of an event. It also shows how the speaker sees the event—perhaps as being connected to a later event, or as being completed by a certain time. Because of this, academic grammars often talk about ‘perfect aspect’ rather than ‘perfect tenses’.

For details of the use of the various perfect verb forms, search the Index.