Translating 'has/have been'

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gestaltist
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Re: Translating 'has/have been'

Post by gestaltist »

Frislander wrote:
Squall wrote:
gestaltist wrote:Perfect tenses are far from a common feature in that language family.
Greek and Latin had perfect tenses as a verb inflection.
The modern European sprachbund uses "have" as an auxiliar verb for expressing perfect tenses.

Maybe perfect continuous tenses are rare.
I think he was referring to Slavic specifically, for which that statement is true as far as I know.
This, but not only. AFAIK, Celtic languages don't have perfect tenses, either. PIE didn't have a perfect tense either, if I am not mistaken.
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Znex
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Re: Translating 'has/have been'

Post by Znex »

qwed117 wrote:In English, the "just"-construction has various semantic meanings based on the surrounding grammatical structures. "have just been" is very different from "just -ed", namely that the former suggests the "only" meaning of just, while the latter suggests the "recently" meaning of just.
Eh, it depends on the emphasis and intonation for me. They could be read either way.
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Frislander
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Re: Translating 'has/have been'

Post by Frislander »

gestaltist wrote:
Frislander wrote:
Squall wrote:
gestaltist wrote:Perfect tenses are far from a common feature in that language family.
Greek and Latin had perfect tenses as a verb inflection.
The modern European sprachbund uses "have" as an auxiliar verb for expressing perfect tenses.

Maybe perfect continuous tenses are rare.
I think he was referring to Slavic specifically, for which that statement is true as far as I know.
This, but not only. AFAIK, Celtic languages don't have perfect tenses, either. PIE didn't have a perfect tense either, if I am not mistaken.
I'm pretty sure Welsh wedi is a perfect of some sort (apparently it's literal meaning is "after", so it makes sense for it to have a perfect sense).
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Re: Translating 'has/have been'

Post by Davush »

Squall wrote:
Therefore:
they have just talked to him - the action is finished and happened short ago.
they were just talking to him - ditto, but it is in a continuous context.
they have been talking to him - they are still talking.
they have just been talking to him - I don't know and I'm not a native speaker to say if it is ungrammatical. I interpret it as the same as the second sentence. Maybe "just" means that it started short ago.
'They have been talking to him' doesn't really imply they are still talking (native speaker).

I think the difference between 'They were/have been talking' is along the same lines as 'They talked/have talked', except the first two are imperfective/continuous and the second two are perfective.

English TAM conflations are confusing.
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Xonen
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Re: Translating 'has/have been'

Post by Xonen »

Dormouse559 wrote:The present continuous doesn't exist in French, so you'll have to use something else.
Right, that should be simple present for French, of course. Like on this page, where it says:
While English uses a present perfect:
I've been here for two hours / He's been driving here since breakfast
French uses "depuis" and a present tense
Je suis ici depuis deux heures / Il conduit depuis le petit déjeuner.
Using the above model, 'the sun has been shining for two hours' would be le soleil brille depuis deux heures, with the present tense, right? And yet
you wrote:I would use the passé composé for the first two sentences [...]

Le soleil a brillé toute la journée.
DEF-M sun have.3SG.PRS shine-PST_PTCP all-F DEF-F day
So to get this straight, you use a different tense depending on whether the time adverbial is "for two hours" or "all morning"? :wat: What the hell were those Basque monks smoking while designing French?
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Dormouse559
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Re: Translating 'has/have been'

Post by Dormouse559 »

Xonen wrote:
Dormouse559 wrote:The present continuous doesn't exist in French, so you'll have to use something else.
Right, that should be simple present for French, of course. Like on this page, where it says:
While English uses a present perfect:
I've been here for two hours / He's been driving here since breakfast
French uses "depuis" and a present tense
Je suis ici depuis deux heures / Il conduit depuis le petit déjeuner.
Using the above model, 'the sun has been shining for two hours' would be le soleil brille depuis deux heures, with the present tense, right?
Right.
Xonen wrote:And yet
you wrote:I would use the passé composé for the first two sentences [...]

Le soleil a brillé toute la journée.
DEF-M sun have.3SG.PRS shine-PST_PTCP all-F DEF-F day
So to get this straight, you use a different tense depending on whether the time adverbial is "for two hours" or "all morning"?
Right. Using the present with "toute la matinée" makes it sound habitual to me (i.e. The sun shines all morning). Don't ask me why that is.
Xonen wrote: :wat: What the hell were those Basque monks smoking while designing French?
Hey, we're talking about French, not Spanish. [:P]

Somewhat relatedly, you might be interested to know that the most shocking moment of my time studying French is the day I learned you can use the passé composé with "depuis". The present is unmarked, while the passé composé implies a long duration. For example:

Je travaille ici depuis sept ans. (present)
I've worked here for seven years.

J'ai travaillé ici depuis sept ans. (passé composé)
I've worked here for seven (long) years.

It just keeps getting more complicated. So about those Basque monks …
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