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Earlier today I had a private lesson with an Italian student—intermediate level, who has been studying the present perfect vs. past simple tense. His teacher had given him an exercise where a list of Italian phrases had to be translated into English. One of the sentences was the following:

Hai sentito che Sally si è rotta una gamba?

It looks deceivingly simple to translate (for a native speaker) but I found myself with five versions, all of which I am certain are idiomatic and grammatical.

  1. Have you heard that Sally broke her leg?
  2. Have you heard that Sally's broken her leg?
  3. Have you heard about Sally breaking her leg?
  4. Did you hear that Sally broke her leg?
  5. Did you hear that Sally's broken her leg?

The actual moment when Sally broke her leg happened at a specific time in the past, hence the past simple seems to me appropriate but we also say, Sally's broken her leg to express an action that occurred in the past but whose consequences are still felt in the present so...

  • Which sentence tells the reader that Sally's leg is still broken?
  • Which tense is more appropriate; the present perfect, Have you heard? Or the past simple Did you hear? Both sound acceptable to me. How is the meaning affected?
  • Is it preferable for both verbs to be in the same tense? Why or why not?
  • Ignoring the Italian translation and focussing on the five sentences, how would you interpret each one? Do they mean the same?

EDIT (updated September 1 2014)
Let me explain, more fully, why I posted this question. There was an Italian phrase which had to be translated (the first line in a short exchange) the rest of the dialogue was easy enough for my student and I to translate but he had difficulties with this first line.

In the exchange we learn that Sally broke her leg while skiing.

A: Have you heard/Did you hear... etc.
B: How did it happen?
A: She was skiing when she fell.

When I thought carefully about how the first sentence could be translated, I came up with five versions. I had a problem explaining to myself why they all sounded equally valid to me, in fairness sentence number 3 sounded the weakest candidate to me because it seems that the news of Sally's accident is very recent and conveys greater intensity.

As I tried to explain earlier, I was wondering how switching the past simple with the present perfect might change the meaning of the first line. If I say: Sally broke her leg, I might be thinking about the precise moment when this accident occurred. The event is established in the past and cannot be repeated. If I say: Sally has broken her leg it is plausible that her leg is still broken, seeing as a broken leg takes about a month to heal, and I am concerned with the results of that action which are felt in the present i.e. Sally now has her leg in a plaster/She cannot walk properly/She is currently injured, etc.

If the first verb is in the past simple, Did you hear...? does it affect how I write the rest of the sentence? Is Have you heard...? more colloquial?

Finally, I am NOT asking about translation, nor how to use the present perfect or the past simple.

Mari-Lou A
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    All of the English sentences you proposed (1-5) are correct grammatically. How are we supposed to suggest which of them (or something else) might be an appropriate translation of that Italian sentence (let alone the most appropriate), if we do not understand Italian? This does not seem like a good question for this site, because it seems to be a question about translation from Italian. – Drew Aug 14 '14 at 21:47
  • Google translate offers: Did you hear that Sally has broken a leg – Mari-Lou A Aug 14 '14 at 22:26
  • @Drew My questions are based on the five sentences above, and whether changing the tense affects their meaning. It is not a question about translation but about meaning and idiomaticity. – Mari-Lou A Aug 14 '14 at 22:29
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    @ElberichSchneider I gave context to my question, in order to explain why I am asking. I'm 99% certain I have translated the Italian phrase correctly, the phrase is from an Italian text book on English grammar, and it's in perfect Italian. Forget the intro, look at the five separate sentences and tell me how their meanings differ. – Mari-Lou A Aug 14 '14 at 22:50
  • @Mari-LouA: I understand that your questions are about the 5 English sentences. But (a) some of your questions, as I indicated, are about therelative appropriateness of the sentences wrt the original (Italian) meaning, and (b) changing the tense always affects the meaning. – Drew Aug 14 '14 at 22:51
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    @Mari-LouA - tough crowd! – anongoodnurse Aug 14 '14 at 23:02
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    @Drew In my opinion the background is useful and appreciated. It seems to me that you have allowed the background information to jade your view of the actual question(s.) The question has been edited since you commented. Perhaps giving it another read might change your opinion. – Lumberjack Aug 14 '14 at 23:22
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    possible duplicate of How do the tenses and aspects in English correspond temporally to one another? – FumbleFingers Aug 14 '14 at 23:32
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    @FumbleFingers ahh, come on?! Why did you close this question? That duplicate does NOT help me in any way. – Mari-Lou A Aug 14 '14 at 23:34
  • @Lumberjack: If the question changes then of course old comments might no longer be appropriate... But so far, the questions still ask Which tense is more appropriate? (for what? wrt what? in what way appropriate?), Is it preferable for both verbs to be in the same tense? (preferable for what? according to what? how to judge, without knowing what the original means?) All of the sentences are correct English. Which is most appropriate and whether it is preferable for the verb tenses to be the same cannot be judged without knowing what the intended meaning is. – Drew Aug 14 '14 at 23:46
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    @Mari-Lou: To the extent that this isn't an Off Topic translation request, surely it's an English Language Learners question? Just because your English is much better than most users there doesn't alter the fact that you're really just asking about tense distinctions from a learner's perspective. – FumbleFingers Aug 14 '14 at 23:48
  • @Drew I posit that the question would still be answerable even if we were to remove the first three paragraphs. The two questions you identified can be justified by simply understanding that the question is about style and usage. I know the book is often reviled here and elsewhere, but Strunk's 1918 Elements of Style states in clear terms "keep to one tense." Questions about style and usage are interesting and fun to read in my opinion, regardless of the background context. – Lumberjack Aug 14 '14 at 23:55
  • @FumbleFingers are any of the five sentences wrong or possibly misleading? Would your average native speaker be able to explain the different nuances? I could choose any of the five sentences and be confident that they translate the Italian phrase, but I can't explain the differences in meaning between them. So permit me to disagree that this question is better suited to ELL. – Mari-Lou A Aug 15 '14 at 00:02
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    @FumbleFingers C'mon,that question that you've linked to is probably one of the worst questions ever asked on this site and should surely have been closed (and if it wasn't, moved to ELL for sure). The top rated answer doesn't accurately or otherwise explain anything about anything about how tense and aspect relate to each other. Us people who are interested in how grammar works, even though we can use our own language proficiently, should be able to use this site to discuss these questions -even if asked by a non-native speaker. I'm not a fan of this question really - but it's fine. – Araucaria - Him Aug 15 '14 at 00:04
  • @Mari-Lou: I really think you can do better. The difference between "Have you heard...?" and "Did you hear...?" is one issue. The difference between using that or about in such constructions is another. The difference between five (and potentially several more) ways of expressing the fact that Sally's leg was broken represents yet another layer of complexity. On top of which there's the irrelevant (and to me, inscrutable) Italian "original" to be factored in. – FumbleFingers Aug 15 '14 at 00:04
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    @FumbleFingers I agree more with your last comment, but that makes the link you've used all the worse ... There's too much to be covered and any answers are just (necessarily) inaccurate. – Araucaria - Him Aug 15 '14 at 00:07
  • @Lumberjack: So I guess you are saying that an answer to the question of whether it is preferable for the tenses to be the same is yes, using the Occam's-razor heuristic from Strunk. I'm OK with someone posting such an answer. I don't think there is enough (for me) to go on, to make such a judgment, and I interpreted preferable as pertaining to the original meaning (which I am ignorant of). Especially given that the 5 sentences have different meanings, I feel that the question of which is preferable needs more than the Strunk measure to answer. – Drew Aug 15 '14 at 00:10
  • @Araucaria: Not necessarily every time, but when I think I'm looking at an "ELL verb-tense" type of question (which much of this one is) I just think it may as well be closed in favour of that particular pre-ELL question. – FumbleFingers Aug 15 '14 at 00:18
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    @FumbleFingers I kind of get your point, but I still think it's useful and interesting to think about what verb forms entail and imply (or what we think they do, when, in fact, they often don't). Tense and aspect aren't really as straightforward as they're painted, people are still writing books about them! – Araucaria - Him Aug 15 '14 at 00:23
  • @Mari-Lou: FWIW, since so far as I can see no-one else has pointed it out, Did you hear about and Have you heard about are about equally common (as would be ...that, I'm sure, but that gets complicated because of false matches). Of course, both of them are rather informal/gossipy - personally, I'd might just use "You do know [blah blah] [don't you]?", 'cos I'm not a gossip. – FumbleFingers Aug 15 '14 at 00:33
  • @Araucaria: Are we discussing English usages that we all understand here? Or are we teaching Mari-Lou something? Or what? There are any number of different ways of expressing the same thing here (most of which don't even depend on framing the delivery of the information in the form of a "rhetorical question"). It should be broken down into the relevant component parts, and they should be addressed on ELL. That's my position, anyway. – FumbleFingers Aug 15 '14 at 00:37
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    @FumbleFingers Well,we are discussing usages that we intuitively understand, but separating what's actually entailed and what's implied by the sentences when there's little context is very different. There are answers on here that imply that the present perfect shows that an event is recent! Another point is that answers for questions on here aren't really only for the OP, they're for everyone who finds the question interesting and wants to read the answers - otherwise there'd be no voting system on the site. I agree about breaking down the question, an perhaps there's too many examples, but.. – Araucaria - Him Aug 15 '14 at 00:47
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    The answer: it depends. :) The version "Did you hear that Sally broke her leg?" might be preferable when the speaker is focusing on the event that Sally's leg got broken. While the version "Did you hear that Sally has broken her leg?" might be preferable when the speaker is focusing on the present time implication of Sally having a broken leg (that Sally won't be coming on the hike tomorrow due to that broken leg). There's also the version with the backshift: "Did you hear that Sally had broken her leg?" – F.E. Aug 15 '14 at 07:09
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    @F.E. Okay, thanks for your comment which is helpful and pertinent. I would exclude the backshift version simply because the translation exercise is about PP vs PS, and in Italian it would be constructed differently in any case. However your sixth version is a perfectly acceptable one. – Mari-Lou A Aug 15 '14 at 07:16
  • The thing that skews the examples for me, and IMO, make them all the more difficult to separate temporaneously, are the openings. When I am asked "Did you hear" or "Have you heard", that is very idiomatic of something that has just occurred. If you remove those from the sentences, it is easier to see that #'s 2, 3 and 5 have an immediacy to them. Hope that helps! Rough crowd today! :-) – Kristina Lopez Aug 15 '14 at 19:24
  • Native speakers really don't know grammar or realize what they are saying until someone who does points it out to them. As Italian does not have simple past/present perfect difference , it is up to you to explain the difference between simple past and present perfect to your student. In terms of translation, however, all your translations are fine since the Italian does not distinguish these meanings. You have to choose which one you want. This is often (but not always) the case in English when making the choice. As a teacher, I had to study this in depth 30 years ago. :) – Lambie Dec 15 '21 at 14:42
  • @Lambie that would make a good answer :) BTW the question was posted waaaay back in 2014. – Mari-Lou A Dec 15 '21 at 20:39
  • @Mari-LouA Ah gees, 2014. I really hate these roll-arounds. :) Maybe if I feel inspired a bit later. Thanks. – Lambie Dec 15 '21 at 20:56
  • @Lambie it got bumped today by a terrible silly spammy "answer" – Mari-Lou A Dec 15 '21 at 20:57

4 Answers4

2

I'm not a linguist but I'll hazard an opinion based on my understanding. (I may be overreading.)

Did you hear that Sally broke her leg? is the simplest of the five and is perfectly acceptable for giving someone a piece of news. All that is expected for a response and follow-up is sympathy (more is of course likely):

Did you hear that Sally broke her leg? No! Poor Sally!

Have you heard... implies something else is going to be said, or that it might have happened several times already. If it is finished with that Sally broke her leg, it is perfectly fine. It's true, it happened in the past, and it's certainly not an ongoing thing, and the news will probably elicit a question of the specified time. There's no need for agreement:

Have you heard that Sally broke her leg? She needs help from her friends.

...that Sally has broken her leg may sound correct, but one of the most common mistakes with the present perfect is that it tends to be over-used. If it doesn't add anything, I wouldn't use it. If there are ramifications, I'd use it:

Have you heard that Sally has broken her leg and needs surgery? She will be needing a lot of help from her family and friends.

Did you hear that Sally's broken her leg? is fine, and implies more information about the leg:

Did you hear that Sally's broken her leg? She's going to have surgery tomorrow.

Have you heard about Sally breaking her leg? suggests that's just the intro to more news. I don't think it's so much the tense as the use of about.

There is no need for the tenses of both clauses to agree. The following is an example:

Sally broke her leg and has been bed ridden for two months...

Which sentence tells the reader that Sally's leg is still broken? None of them exactly, but it's implied by the recent "Have you heard/Did you hear?" We don't usually say in any situation ...it's still broken. Instead, of an old fracture now healed, we might say

Had you heard that Sally broke her leg last winter? I had not heard until last week.

As I said, I'm not a linguist, but this is my take.

anongoodnurse
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  • French manages with just the perfect, in everyday speech and informal writing. The past is only used in formal writing such as in novels. So the varying nuances that one can achieve through use of past or perfect in English are unavailable in French conversation. But if they said something like 'Sally has broken her leg' in an instance where we would say 'Sally broke her leg', a French speaker might add that it just happened on Thursday. There is more than one way to skin a cat, as they say. – WS2 Aug 14 '14 at 23:08
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    @WS2 I get what you're saying, but it doesn't parallel that way. The present perfect is talking about a not-definite time in the past. You can't be thinking in this way if you add on Thursday! Also, the present perfect on it's own doesn't imply recentness. This impression in the example is carried by Have you heard. To illustrate; A: *Have you ever broken your leg?* B: *NO, but Sally's broken her leg.* B's sentence doesn't imply any recentness. – Araucaria - Him Aug 14 '14 at 23:44
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    @WS2 - This is English Language & Usage. – anongoodnurse Aug 14 '14 at 23:48
  • @Araucaria That is exactly my point. French manages with the perfect alone in conversation. the 'Past historic' being reserved for formally written pieces. And my point is that there are other ways than through choice of tenses to convey nuanced meanings. – WS2 Aug 15 '14 at 07:29
  • @medica I was taught when I was at school well over a half-century ago that one cannot properly understand English without some knowledge of the Romance languages, in our case Latin and French. – WS2 Aug 15 '14 at 07:32
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To indicate that Sally's leg is still broken, stay away from the past tense (your examples #1 and #4). If you use the past tense the leg could still be broken, but past tense doesn't indicate that fact. If I say "Sally broke her leg yesterday" maybe you can guess it probably is still broken but if I say "Sally broke her leg 6 months ago" there's a good chance it's healed by now and past tense gives you no indication of whether it is still broken.

Similarly, to indicate that Sally's leg is still broken, stay away from the participial phrase form (your example #3). Especially in this context, a sentence starting, "have you heard", there is no indication that the action being described is still happening. If I ask you "have you heard about the mariner shooting the albatross?" you should not conclude that the mariner is still shooting the albatross. It could have happened a really long time ago!

The present perfect form (your examples #2 and #5) indicates that something happened in the very recent past so for something that takes as long to heal as a broken leg it should reasonably indicate that the leg is still broken, but to be absolutely clear have you considered the present tense? For instance, "Sally's leg is broken" or "Sally has a broken leg?" Because in that case there would be no doubt that Sally's leg is still broken!

If you say "did you hear" (past tense) it means did you hear at some point in the past? If you say "have you heard" (present perfect) it means did you hear at some point in the recent past? Both mean the same thing in this case.

There is no need for the sentence verb to be the same tense as the verb used in the gerund phrase (that Sally..). I can say, for instance, "I know that you wrote this question." The sentence verb tense should be appropriate for the sentence action and the gerund verb tense should be appropriate for the gerund action.

Note I've included a couple of sources that present perfect implies recent events since one comment on another answer claimed this isn't true. My understanding is there are 3 basic uses for present perfect: experience up to present (often with the word "ever"), recent past, and a recent journey. A broken leg would normally not be experience up to the present when combined with "did you hear" or "have you heard" (who says "did you hear I have broken my leg" if they are referring to their medical history from childhood?) so the choices are recent past or a recent trip. A recent trip doesn't make sense. So that leaves recent past.

"We use the present perfect simple with action verbs to emphasise the completion of an event in the recent past." Cambridge Dictionaries Online http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/grammar/british-grammar/present-perfect-simple-or-present-perfect-continuous

"The present perfect is often used to express recent events that affect the present moment." About.com http://esl.about.com/od/grammarstructures/ig/Tenses-Chart/presperf2.htm

"we often use the present perfect for recent events" wordpress.com http://englishprojectoxford.wordpress.com/2013/10/24/present-perfect/

Brillig
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  • Hmm, CDO grammar seems a bit wonky: Have dinosaurs ever roamed the earth? Has Britain ever been ruled by Romans? Or in affirmative sentences: I've been inoculated against measles. Britain's been invaded by Romans, Vikings and Normans. Dinosaurs have roamed this island etc ... – Araucaria - Him Aug 15 '14 at 00:38
  • My understanding is there are 3 basic uses for present perfect: experience up to present (often with the word "ever" as I notice all your questions contain), recent past, and a recent journey. A broken leg would normally not be experience up to the present when combined with "did you hear" or "have you heard" so the choices are recent past or a recent trip. A recent trip doesn't make sense. So that leaves recent past. Another source: http://englishprojectoxford.wordpress.com/2013/10/24/present-perfect/ – Brillig Aug 15 '14 at 01:02
  • Didn't get this edit in in time but I wanted to include the example that if I say "Did you hear Britian's been invaded?" it implies some recent news not history from the middle ages! Also I'll edit my answer to make this point clearer. – Brillig Aug 15 '14 at 01:10
  • Sometimes it's good to take a break, and re-read a post. This is a very good answer, and proposes a sensible solution. "Have you heard? Sally's leg is broken"; I don't know why I didn't see it before. Thank you! This answer should help future visitors too. – Mari-Lou A Sep 05 '14 at 08:45
  • I find this answer leaves out two key points: Deciding on the simple past or present perfect can be a function of what a speaker wants to say. Also, the present perfect includes the axiom: true at the time of speaking. In other words, "Did you hear she has broken her leg last year"=Buzzer. "Did you hear that Sally" can be followed by: "has broken her leg" or "broke her leg", in this case, without a big difference in meaning. However, the question after that must be, so to speak: P2: Oh? When did she break it?. – Lambie Dec 15 '21 at 14:50
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The sentences your Italian student was given are a bit confusing as they're all correct in their own way. For me, a Brit, the best answer is number two, simply because this is about teaching the difference between the past simple and the present perfect (which is probably one of the hardest things to learn for EFL students). "Sally broke her leg" implies it happened in a finished past situation: 10 years ago, last week, in 1989, after the last time we spoke about Sally, etc. "Sally's broken her leg" implies it happened recently or in an incomplete time period: since we last spoke to or saw each other, for example. So although the breaking of the leg happened at a specific time in the past, it's the lack of an indication of exactly when it happened coupled with its consequences in terms of the present that's important.

Mark Raishbrook
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  • which would make #2 a better answer than #5 because....? It seems you're only responding to the first of the four parts of the question and not really addressing everything that's being asked. – Brillig Aug 15 '14 at 00:18
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"Have you heard…" is the most common way to say this, and it applies to your sentence too, so I'd use "have you heard."

"Sally has broken her leg" may suggest that her leg is still broken (while "sally broke her leg" doesn't), but it does not tell it to the reader certainly. Whatever you choose, the meaning in those sentences will pretty much remain the same.

Roughly, we can say that "Sally broke her leg" refers more to the fact that Sally leg was broken, but it's not really important; just something that happened in the past. "Sally has broken her leg" can suggest that the injury affects the present that you—as the speaker—care of/talking about somehow; it doesn't matter when, where or why, it's happened and Sally's leg is broken.

For example, "we have a big dance performance coming up and Sally's broken her leg!" tells us that Sally is a dancer, her dance class is scheduled to perform soon, the speaker is one of Sally's class members, and now Sally won't be able to perform because her leg is broken. But if it's not the case then I suggest you to use Past Simple.

Lastly,

Have you heard about Sally breaking her leg?

This one implies that the story of how she broke her leg is what matters. Who cares about Sally's leg? The story is hilarious.

user88247
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