 #2 (permalink) Thu May 11, 2006 21:00 pm Present perfect |
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| mr brown wrote: | | ... the court has appointed me your public defender ... isn't it an action happend in the past? |
Hi Mr Brown 
You have asked an interesting question. 
Yes, the appointment (in your sentence) is in the past. In this case, however, it's probably the very recent past and it is also the first time that the other person has been told who his public defender is. So, this is a past action that has an affect on the present. In this sentence, it is completely unimportant when the appointment happened. What's important is that it happenend.
You often find this pattern in a conversation when you want to know whether someone has ever done something in the past. Yes or no. "Have you ever seen Phantom of the Opera?" In this question the idea of when is not (yet) important and the present perfect is simply the "lead in sentence". Basically the question is asking whether "in your life up to now" something has happened.
If the person says yes to your question, the simple past tense would be used to talk about further details of that past event. "Yes, my husband and I saw it last year. We loved it."
If you listen to Americans speak, however, you will probably notice that this "rule" is often ignored. Americans seem to use the present perfect much less often than the British.
By the way...
| mr brown wrote: | | (i have seen this in a film) |
I think this sentence would have been better in the simple past tense (I saw this in a film) because it's a detail about the past and about a sentence already mentioned.
Does that help?
Amy |
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Yankee
I'm a Communicator ;-)
Joined: 16 Apr 2006
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Location: USA
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