Lesson 34:The Present Perfect and the Past Perfect in Turkish



The PRESENT PERFECT TENSE has no specific verbal pattern in Turkish as it does in English.
Indeed we should say that this tense does not exist in Turkish as a verbal tense but there is correspondance  to some extent between the Turkish Simple Past Tense - Geçmiş zaman or  the Reported past tense - Belirsiz geçmis zaman  and the Present Perfect tense as we intend it in English.
Whatever in English is expressed in Present Perfect tense  in Turkish is expressed in Simple Past tense or Reported past tense.
The key to understand whether  a Turkish sentence in simple past tense or reported past  is equivalent to an English Present perfect is  the presence of some specific adverbs which indicate that an action started in the past still produces its effects in the present.


Among these adverbs the most important are:

Yeni:  Just, already  (it also means "new", depending on the context).
Henuz: Not yet
Hala:    Yet

A model of sentence which can be translated in Present perfect is the following.

O henuz gelmedi  - He hasn't arrived yet.

O henuz   gelmemiş   -   He reportedly hasn't arrived yet

As you may notice, the Turkish sentences are in simple past tense and reported past respectively.They have been both translated in English using the Present Perfect tense.






  

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