yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Perfect Aspect | The parts of speech | Grammar | Khan Academy


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

Hello Garans. Today I want to talk to you about the idea of the perfect aspect of verbs. What that means is that it's not, you know, beyond reproach or that it's like beautiful and shiny. No, no, no. What it means is really that whatever we're talking about, whatever action we are talking about, is complete.

So, we use the perfect aspect in all tenses to illustrate when something has been completed prior to the present moment. When we talk about the present, we're talking about one point now. But when we're using aspect, it enables us to talk about a period between then and now. You're speaking in the now, referring to a point previous.

So, we could say, um, using the perfect, the way you form the perfect is you simply add "have," and then you use the past form of the verb. So if my assignment, for example, were to wash some dishes, when the dishes were complete, I would say to the person that told me to wash the dishes, "I have washed the dishes."

So I'm using the present tense form of "to have" and the past tense form of "washed."

So as with the progressive aspect, the thing that changes is the helper verb. This part, the main verb, does not change; it remains in the past tense even if we're talking about the present or the future. The part that changes is "have."

So if we want to put this story in the past, you know, talk about a period that is then but also say that we washed the dishes at a period before then, right, a time before the moment in the past that we're talking about—if that makes sense—we would say, "I had washed the dishes."

And if we want to talk about something in the future that happens before that future moment but after now, we would use the future perfect to say, "I will have washed the dishes."

And that's what the perfect aspect allows us to do. It allows us to travel backward in time a little bit extra. It allows us to say, "Oh well, before the point in this story that I'm mentioning, this thing was already completed."

So the perfect enables us to say, "Here is a thing that happened in the past; here is a verb action that has completed in the past prior to the moment I'm talking about."

So to recap, the perfect refers to something finished. You can learn anything, Daveid, out.

More Articles

View All
Identifying f, f', and f'' based on graphs
Let ( f ) be a twice differentiable function. One of these graphs is the graph of ( f ), one is of ( f’ ), and one is of the second derivative of ( f’ ). Match each function with its appropriate graph. So, I encourage you to pause the video and try to fi…
Describing populations | Ecology and natural systems | High school biology | Khan Academy
As you might imagine from the title in this video, we’re going to do a little bit of describing populations. So the first question is: what is a population? You can view it as a group of individuals from the same species living in the same general area. …
Give Me Some Slack | Dirty Rotten Survival
This is it. This is the spot, baby! See this slot right here? This is pretty good. So just confirm this is better than an RV ride to a gas station? Yeah, it’s definitely more manly. You better believe it! Right, we’ll get you down there, we’ll get some w…
Take Accountability to Earn Equity
Accountability is important because that’s how you’re going to get leverage. That’s how you’re going to get credibility. It’s also how you’re going to get equity. You’re gonna get a piece of the business when you’re negotiating with other people. Ultimat…
Dark Energy: The Void Filler
A quick shoutout to Squarespace for sponsoring this video. In 1999, Saul Perlmutter was asking himself a question that many of us may have thought of before: will the universe exist forever, or will it have an end? Will the universe slowly expand for th…
First Ascent of a Sky Island | Podcast | Overheard at National Geographic
El Dorado, the legendary city covered in gold, doesn’t seem like a place that could really exist. But then, neither did tapuis in the Guyana Highlands, a remote region of South American rainforest. Flat mountains with vertical walls rise high above the fo…