perfect (adj./n.) (perf, PERF, PF)

A term used in the GRAMMATICAL description of VERB FORMS, referring to a contrast of a temporal or durative kind, and thus sometimes handled under the heading of TENSE (e.g. ‘perfect’, ‘future perfect’, ‘pluperfect’) and sometimes under ASPECT (e.g. ‘perfective’, ‘non-perfective’). It is illustrated in English by the contrast between I go and I have gone, or between I have gone and I had gone (traditionally called the pluperfect, also now past perfect). LINGUISTS prefer an aspectual analysis here, because of the complex interaction of durational, completive and temporal features of meaning involved; TRADITIONAL grammars, however, refer simply to ‘perfect tense’, etc., and thus imply a meaning which is to some degree an oversimplification. ‘Perfect’, in these contexts, refers to a past situation where the event is seen as having some present relevance; in perfective aspect, by contrast, a situation is seen as a whole, regardless of the time contrasts which may be a part of it. Perfective then contrasts with imperfective or non-perfective, which draws attention to the internal time-structuring of the situation. The terminological distinction between ‘perfect’ and ‘perfective’ is often blurred, because grammarians writing on English have often used the latter term to replace the former, presumably because they wish to avoid its traditional associations. But this can lead to confusion in the discussion of those LANGUAGES (such as the Slavic languages) where both notions are required. In such languages as Russian and Polish, for example, a contrast between perfective and imperfective is fundamental to verb classification, and is formally marked MORPHOLOGICALLY. For example, the PREFIX προ- (‘pro-’) before the verb ‘read’ produces a ‘perfective verb’ where the meaning is that the action (of reading) is completed; in the ‘imperfective verb’, which lacks the prefix, there is no such implication.