Perfect verb tenses

1. PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE

2.  HAVE + past participle
 Present perfect: She has lost her memory
 Present perfect continuous: They have been living in France for the last year
 Past perfect: I told him that I had never heard of that place
 Past perfect continuous: They had been flying for an hour when they crashed
 Future perfect: We will have finished by tomorrow afternoon
 Perfect infinitive: I’m sorry to have disturbed you
 Perfect gerund:Having seen the film, I don’t want to read the book

3. The perfect tenses link TWO POINTS IN
TIME.
They refer not only to the time of an event
but also HOW the speaker sees the event.

4.  Present perfect simple:
 Result: finished events connected to the present: I’ve broken my leg
 News: Andy has won a big prize!
 Repetition: I’ve written ten e-mails this morning
 Unfinished actions (State verbs): I’ve known her for years
 FOCUS ON how many/much? How often?
 Present perfect continuous:
 Unfinished actions: It’s been raining all day
 Recent actions with a result in the present: I’ve been running
 Repeated actions: People have been phoning me a lot all day
 FOCUS ON how long? Continuous change

5.  Earlier past
 Often used after verbs of saying and thinking
 Not used with time conjuctions: after, as soon as, once...
 Also used in structures with WISH, 3rd and mixed CONDITIONALS
 With expressions like: It was the first/second.. time... (that)
 I told her that I had finished
 As soon as Jane arrived, we sat down to eat
 I wish I had studied more
 If I had known it was going to be like this...
 It was the first time I had heard her sing

6.  Past perfect continuous focuses on HOW LONG
 Often needs a reference of time, duration.
 Refers to an action / situation which had continued up to the past moment we are
thinking about, or shortly before it.
 At that time we had been living in the caravan for six months.
 When I saw Mary, I could see that she had been crying
 I went to the doctor because I had been sleeping badly.

7.  To say something will be finished or complete by a certain time in the future
 Uses the preposition BY
 Also used to express certainty about the past
 The builders say they will have finished the roof by Tuesday
 I’ll have been teaching for twenty years next summer
 It’s no use phoning – he’ll have left by now

8.  INFINITIVE: after certain structures or modals in the past WOULD, SHOULD,
MUST...
 GERUND: when the two clauses have the same subject
 I regret to have offended her
 If I had had the courage to do it, I wouldn’t have ended up this way
 You should have studied more for your test
 He must have been crying. His eyes are red.

9. PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE