Michael Lewis: >Indeed, those constructions are not "perfect". We're getting caught up in the problem that grammatically we have to contend with three different points on the time line...trying to describe a Germanic language using a system that was developed for Latin. Yep. The websites are just simplifying. As was my Latin grammar back then. When I was a child I learned grammar as a child. They did tell me that "perfect" meant "completed", but it never seemed quite right, as a distinguishing feature from, say, the imperfect or even the plain old historic past that English offers. So while on the one hand I saw the _theory_ through a glass darkly, in _practice_, on the other hand, it was dead easy to stick standard endings on the right verb form, ending up with past, present, and future perfect "tenses" so that before I knew it I was reading Octavian and Augustus and so on with the best of them, and just forgot about the strange names. But now I start to see the theory face to face. Of course, it can still be easier to introduce people to a topic by starting with a simplified version (which most will never go beyond), and that partially explains those 111,000 Google hits. ************************************************** To post a message to austechwriter, send the message to austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx To subscribe to austechwriter, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "subscribe" in the Subject field. To unsubscribe, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe" in the Subject field. To search the austechwriter archives, go to www.freelists.org/archives/austechwriter To contact the list administrator, send a message to austechwriter-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx **************************************************