The Quirky Australian Present Perfect Tense

A listener named Milton asked why Australians use the present perfect tense for the past tense. For example, he said Australians would say, “He has skulked,” instead of “He skulked.” That’s the present perfect tense: the verb “has” or “have” combined with the past participle: “has skulked.” And somewhat confusingly, even though it’s called the “present perfect” tense, it’s usually used to talk about something that happened at an unspecified time in the past.

I’ve spent significant time with a few Australians over the years—my lab mate in grad school was from Adelaide, and a good friend is married to a man from Sydney and we all worked together at a startup—but I had never noticed them doing what Milton described, so I knew I had to look into this more.

First, although you’ll find some sources on the internet that say it’s a myth that Australians talk this way, papers published in the “Australian Journal of Linguistics” by Dulcie Engel and Maria-Eve Ritz in 2000 and in the journal “Linguistics” in 2008 found that Australians do use the present prefect tense in more situations than people from other English speaking countries.

Americans and the British Use Present Perfect Tense Differently

Let’s look at the data about British English and American English first. Americans are much less likely to use the present perfect tense than the British. 

We just don’t seem to say it. For example, a 1974 book by Frank Palmer called “The English Verb” said that while the British would use the present perfect tense and ask before dinner, “Have you washed your hands?” an American was much more likely to use the simple past and ask, “Did you wash your hands?”

A database of spoken American English didn't have any instances of people using the present perfect tense.

In fact, researchers trying to study the use of the present perfect tense in speech had to rely solely on British examples because their database of spoken American English didn’t have any examples. And according to Engel and Ritz, many other studies have also found this difference between British English and American English. 

So people in these two countries use the present perfect tense differently. What else do we know?

The Present Perfect Tense...

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