The English Present Perfect in Authentic Use and Textbooks: A

PASAA

Volume 60

July - December 2020

The English Present Perfect in Authentic Use

and Textbooks: A Corpus-driven Study

Chanakarn Chareonkul*

Raksangob Wijitsopon

Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok 10330, Thailand

Email: [email protected]

Abstract

One of the reasons why EFL learners have difficulties

with the English present perfect tense is that little attention

has been paid to the relationship between patterns and

meanings of the tense (Yoshimura et al., 2014). To fill this

gap, the present study takes a corpus-driven approach to

the pattern-meaning interface of the present perfect, using

British and American English corpora. It is found that the

present perfect can express seven groups of meanings:

‗accomplishment with relevance to the present‘, ‗continuing

from the past to the present‘, ‗change of condition‘,

‗experience‘, ‗recency‘, ‗discovery‘, and ‗possession‘. These

meanings are found to be associated with distinctive co-

occurrence patterns. The corpus-informed insights were

then applied to an analysis of present perfect instances

presented in textbooks used in Thailand‘s universities. It is

found that the corresponding patterns and meanings can

also be found in the sampled textbooks, but the textbooks

tend to under-present a core meaning and highlight only a

few uses of the present perfect. The study thereby offers a

new perspective on the English present perfect and also

provides empirical evidence for development of EFL

textbooks and teaching materials.

Keywords: English present perfect, Pattern grammar,

Corpus-driven approach, ESL/EFL textbooks, Corpus

linguistics

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Introduction

The present study aims to investigate the use of present

perfect (henceforth PP) in general corpora and PP samples

presented in textbooks used at the tertiary level in Thailand. PP is

considered ―one of the most semantically complex verb forms‖

(Kearns, 2011: 182) since it can be used to convey several

meanings (Comrie, 1975; Quirk et al., 1985; Eastwood, 1995;

Greenbaum and Nelson, 2002; Kearns, 2011). This complex

nature of PP may be the reason why it is likely to cause difficulties

among second language learners (Karpava and Agouraki, 2014;

Han and Hong, 2015; Thumvichit, 2016). It has been found that

second language learners tend to convey the PP meanings in other

tenses in language, e.g. the past and the present simple tenses.

This might be because they fail to work on the form-meaning

mapping of PP (Yoshimura et al., 2014), and most of the reference

grammar and previous studies on PP themselves tend to treat

forms and meanings separately (see e.g. Comrie, 1975; Quirk et

al., 1985; Eastwood, 1995; Biber et al., 1999; Greenbaum and

Nelson, 2002; Kearns, 2011).

Most of the previous studies on PP and language learners

have centered around learner output. That is, they focus on how

learners use PP (see e.g. Arakkitsakul, 2008; Payre-Ficout,

Brissau, and Chevrot, 2009; Petchtae, 2011; Yoshimura et al.,

2013; Patanasorn, 2013; Karpava and Agouraki, 2014; Han and

Hong, 2015; Thumvichit, 2016). Few studies have concentrated on

such input for learners as teaching materials although it has been

observed that textbooks and teaching materials which contain

inadequate descriptions could be the reason why second language

learners encounter difficulties in mastering PP (Thumvichit, 2016).

Among the few studies that have investigated PP in textbooks are

Shortall (2007) and Fujimoto (2017), which found that textbooks

tend to highlight forms of PP with an extensive presentation of

time adverbials used in the PP construction, e.g. ‗already‘, ‗just‘,

‗ever‘, ‗never‘.

The present study therefore seeks to fill these gaps by

addressing two important questions. The first one is oriented

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towards a linguistic question focusing on the relationship between

patterns and meanings of PP as observable from general corpora.

The second issue the study seeks to explore is oriented towards

applied linguistic interests, involving an analysis of the PP

samples presented in textbooks used in universities in Thailand.

This is in order to investigate whether the patterns and meanings

of PP that can be found from general corpora correspond to those

found in textbooks. To operationalize these aims, the research

questions can be spelled out as follows:

1. What are meanings of PP that emerge from corpus data and

what co-occurrence patterns are associated to each of

them?

2. Based on the categories in research question 1, what are

major uses of the PP, given their frequencies?

3. To what extent do the meanings, forms and distribution

patterns found in general corpora correlate with those

found in textbooks used by Thai universities?

The present paper employed a corpus-driven approach to

analyzing the pattern-meaning relationship of PP. The following

sections give details on PP and the theoretical framework, followed

by the methodology used in the present study. Results are

reported and discussed before a conclusion is given.

The English Present Perfect

PP has received a great deal of attention in English

linguistic studies and is considered ―one of the most semantically

complex verb forms‖ (Kearns, 2011: 182). This is because PP can

be used to convey several meanings. In general, linguistic

descriptions and grammar references, works on PP include Comrie

(1975), Quirk et al. (1985), Eastwood (1995), Greenbaum and

Nelson (2002) and Kearns (2011). These different accounts offer

descriptions on PP meanings, which overlap and differ in some

ways. They can be spelled out as follows:

(1) ‗Continuing action/ event/ state from the past to the

present‘: This meaning indicates an action or event which

occurred in the past and that action or event still continues

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to the present, e.g. ―Sheila has worked in the library since

December‖ (Kearns, 2011: 184; emphasis added)‖. This

meaning is stated in several studies and references, e.g.

Comrie (1975), Quirk et al. (1985), Eastwood (1995),

Greenbaum and Nelson (2002) and Kearns (2011).

(2) ‗Result states‘: This meaning indicates that an action or

event finished in the past but its results have effects on or

are related to the present, e.g. ―Henry can‘t dance the pas

seul, he has pulled a tendon (Henry is now injured) (Kearns,

2011: 182; emphasis added)‖. This meaning is noted in

Comrie (1975) and Kearns (2011).

(3) ‗Experiential states‘: This meaning refers to an experience

someone has had from the past up to the present, e.g. ―Bill

has been to America (on at least one occasion, Bill did in

fact go to America)‖ (Comrie, 1975: 59; emphasis added).

This meaning has only been mentioned explicitly in Comrie

(1975).

(4) ‗Repeated action/ event‘: This meaning indicates an action

or event which repeatedly occurs from the past to the

present, e.g. ―Gayle has acted in more than fifty films.

(Eastwood, 1995:88; emphasis added)‖. A few English

grammar references, i.e. Comrie (1975), Eastwood (1995),

and Greenbaum and Nelson (2002), state this meaning in

their descriptions of PP.

(5) ‗Recent action/ event‘: This meaning makes reference to an

action or event which recently occurred, e.g. ―Bill has just

(this minute) arrived (Comrie, 1975: 60; emphasis added)‖.

This meaning is raised only in Comrie (1975) and Kearns

(2011).

Based on the semantic categorization above, it seems that

the ‗continuing action, event, or state from the past to the present‘

meaning is a core meaning of PP since it is stated in several

studies. Other meanings, on the other hand, may be taken as

relatively marginal. However, these descriptions of PP meanings

tend to be based upon an intuitive observation. None of them

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provide empirical evidence on the use of PP in communication.

This in turn can be a limitation from a communicative perspective,

which is often adopted in a pedagogical context. Because empirical

evidence can add a quantitative dimension, e.g. frequency of each

use, to the PP descriptions, it is useful for pedagogical applications

in that it can point to the ways in which some uses may be

highlighted to learners more than others (Leech, 1997).

Apart from meanings of PP, previous studies also look at a

certain aspect of PP patterns, specifically at verbs and adverbials

that occur in the PP construction. As an example, Biber et al.

(1999) have found that the three most frequently used verbs in the

PP construction are ‗been‘, ‗had‘, and ‗got‘. Verbs which designate

―physical or communicative activities with consequences that can

exist over an extended period of time‖, e.g. ‗go‘, ‗do‘, ‗say‘, and

‗make‘, are also found to be commonly used with PP (Biber et al.,

1999: 465).

It has also been found that PP tends to co-occur with some

adverbials in its context of occurrence. Most of these adverbials

indicate the duration or the beginning point of time (Biber et al.,

1999). The examples of such adverbials are ‗since‘ and ‗already‘ as

in ―We‟ve had it since last January‖ and ―The bigger nations, for

their part, have already developed systems of takeover

supervision‖ (Biber et al., 1999: 468; emphasis added). Other

adverbials that have been shown to be used with PP are those

which mark the present moment e.g. ‗today‘, ‗this month‘, and

‗this year‘ (Quirk et al., 1985).

While these studies focus on the surface patterns in the

occurrences of the PP construction, they do not relate their

findings on forms to meanings of the tense. In fact, as illustrated

above, the previous studies on PP deal with its patterns and

meanings separately. Based upon the corpus linguistic emphasis

on empirical evidence of the interface between patterns and

meanings, the present study seeks to fill this gap by investigating

this relationship in the PP construction. The theoretical framework

on the relationship between patterns and meanings is explained

below.

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Theoretical framework: The relationship between linguistic

patterns and meanings

The past decades have seen a large number of applications

of corpora to develop new descriptions of English grammar, e.g.

Gabrielatos (2019) and Charoensirisoonthorn (2017). Many

corpus-based studies have found that there is a close relationship

between patterns and meanings in English (Partington et al.,

2013; Hunston and Francis, 2000; Römer, 2005, 2006, 2009). In

corpus linguistics where lexis is prioritized (Mahlberg, 2007),

Hunston and Francis (2000: 37) defined ‗pattern‘ as follows:

The patterns of a word can be deﬁned as all the words and

structures which are regularly associated with the word and

which contribute to its meaning. A pattern can be identiﬁed

if a combination of words occurs relatively frequently, if it is

dependent on a particular word choice, and if there is a

clear meaning associated with it.

Given the definition above, it can be seen that forms and

meanings are regarded as inseparable in the corpus linguistic

approach to English grammar; patterns can be identified on the

basis of recurrent forms of co-occurrence between words and

structures, which are closely associated to particular meanings.

Based on this principle, Hunston and Francis (2000: 29)

demonstrate how ―certain patterns ‗select‘ words of particular

meanings‖. For example, the pattern it + link verb + adjective +

clause selects only words relating to ―modality, ability, importance,

predictability, obviousness, value and appropriacy, rationality,

truth‖ to be filled in the adjective slot e.g. ―It is interesting/

likely/clear/important/true that or It is useful/sensible/possible

to‖ (Francis, 1995 as cited in Hunston and Francis, 2000: 29).

Based on this theoretical concept, it is hypothesized in the

present study that the PP construction, i.e. HAVE + past participle

verb, selects some particular groups of verbs in the construction

and co-occurs with particular (groups of) lexical items in its close

environment in its expression of different meanings. These

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hypotheses form the basis of the analysis of PP in the present

study.

Corpus linguistics and teaching materials

Textbooks are one of the main teaching materials in

language learning. According to Römer (2006), in order to improve

teaching materials, studies focusing on the comparison between

the language that is used in real life and the language that is used

to teach learners are required. This is in order to explore the area

that still causes learners a problem.

Römer (2006) illustrates her argument through an

investigation into the English progressives taught in German EFL

textbooks and that found in the British National Corpus (BNC).

The findings show that there are differences between what is

presented in textbooks and the ways in which English native

speakers tend to use the progressives, as represented in general

corpora. For example, the meaning of progressives concerning a

repeated action, e.g. ‗I remember that from when we were looking

at houses down there‘, is found in the BNC, but no single instance

is found in German EFL textbooks. Römer argued that the

absence of the ‗repeatedness‘ meaning of the present progressive

might mislead learners that progressive forms and repeatedness

do not go together.

Besides the English progressives, Römer (2004) also

explored the use of modal auxiliaries in the same textbook series

compared with the British National Corpus (BNC). The

discrepancy between the textbooks and the corpus was also

observed with regard to frequencies of the modal auxiliaries. For

instance, it was found in the textbooks that the modal ‗would‘ is

significantly underused, while it is the second most frequent

modal in the BNC. Mukundan and Khojasteh (2011) also found

the discrepancy in the frequencies of modal auxiliaries between

Malaysian English textbooks and the British National Corpus. For

example, while it was found in the BNC that the modal ‗could‘ is

one of the most frequent modals, it is relatively rare in the

Malaysian English textbooks.

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It can be seen from the above previous studies that content

and language samples used in textbooks are likely to differ from

what tends to be used in authentic communication. This might be

partly because the presentation of language in textbooks is based

on the pedagogical grammar perspective, which emphasizes rules

that are more learning-oriented and easy for learners to learn and

understand.

However, pedagogic grammars have some disadvantages.

According to Tognini-Bonelli (2001), pedagogic grammars often

misrepresent linguistic facts. This often has an impact on learners

when they applied rules to produce language, but the rules are not

sufficient enough for them to have a good language production.

Thus, authenticity of language in textbooks and teaching

materials are important and should not be overlooked if we want

to develop language teaching and teaching materials.

With respects to the present perfect tense, very few studies

have been conducted on the analysis of the English present

perfect in textbooks in comparison with general corpora. In

addition, previous studies in this line (e.g. Shortall, 2007;

Fujimoto, 2017) tend to focus on forms and adverbials used with

the present perfect, but not on meanings and their relationship

with patterns. Therefore, an investigation into correspondence

between present perfect meanings and patterns in general corpora

in this study will be compared with those in textbooks.

Methodology

Corpus data and compilation

Data used in this study are from two types of corpora:

general corpora, i.e. corpora which contain ―texts from different

genres and domains of use including spoken and written, private

and public‖ (Kennedy, 1998: 20), and a corpus of PP samples in

textbooks.

General corpora

Two general corpora, i.e. British English 2006 (henceforth

BE2006) and American English 2006 (henceforth AME2006), were

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employed in the present study. The two corpora, compiled by Paul

Baker at Lancaster University, are available online via the CQP

system. BE2006 is a corpus of 500 contemporary British English

written texts, which contains 1,147,097 tokens. Although its size

can be considered relatively small when compared with general

corpora often used, such as the British National Corpus (BNC),

which contains approximately 100 million words, BE2006 was

selected in this study as it has more recent samples of English

texts, i.e. those published between 2005-2007, than the BNC,

which contains texts published between 1960-1993. AME2006 is

a comparable American English corpus of BE2006. It is an

electronic collection of 500 American English written texts

containing 1,175,965 tokens in total. Hence, results from general

corpora in the present study are based on approximately

2,000,000-token database of two major varieties of English.

The choice of both British English and American English

corpora was made because it is related to a comparison with

English textbooks. Most of the English language textbooks in

Thailand are from UK and USA publishers, e.g. Cambridge

University Press, Pearson ELT, Oxford University Press, and

McGraw-Hill Education. Thus, in order to compare the use of PP

in authentic English and that in English textbooks used in

Thailand, both BE2006 and AME2006 were opted.

A limitation as a result of our choice of data has to be

remarked on. That is, no distinction in the use of PP in spoken

and written registers cannot be made in this study. This is

because the presentation of grammar in textbooks often aims to

develop integrated skills, including speaking and writing in

English. At the same time, the corpora BE2006 and AME2006

contain only samples from written texts, which also comprise

fictional dialogues. Though not being authentic, fictional dialogue

is seen as more or less portraying natural language conversation

(Oostdijk, 1990) and actually even encouraged in English language

teaching (Jones and Oakey, 2019). Therefore, the fictional dialogue

data in the two corpora were also included in the study.

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English textbook corpus

Because one of the aims of the present study is to examine

to what extent PP in textbooks used in Thailand corresponds with

real-life usage, a corpus of PP samples in textbooks (henceforth

TB) was compiled. English language textbooks from the

foundation English courses in the top ten universities according to

2017 QS Asia University Rankings of Thailand were collected.

Textbooks used in the foundation English course were selected

because the course is normally required for all first-year students

in universities in Thailand. The sampled textbooks analyzed in the

present paper cover the same level, i.e. the intermediate level.

They are therefore representative and comparable in terms of their

target learners. A list of the sampled textbooks in this study is

provided in Appendix A.

The present perfect samples in the ten sampled textbooks

were collected and extracted from the chapters with PP as a focus.

These chapters from the ten textbooks contain approximately

70,000 tokens and yield 1,360 present perfect instances. All of

these instances were extracted from the PP lessons, including

examples of uses, dialogues, reading texts, exercises, and

transcriptions of the video or audio files. All of them were

converted to plain text (.txt file) for the compilation of an electronic

corpus of the present perfect samples in textbooks.

Data analysis

Data from general corpora and from textbooks were

analysed from a corpus-driven perspective, i.e. an approach that

is used ―to derive linguistic categories systematically from the

recurrent patterns and the frequency distributions that emerge

from language in context‖ (Tognini-Bonelli 2001: 87). Using the

corpus-driven approach, priority is given to data; Analysis of data

can lead to a new generalization as new linguistic categories may

emerge from the data. Examples of corpus-driven studies include

Feng et al. (2018), Granger and Paquot (2015), Biber (2009),

Hunston and Francis (2000). To illustrate, Tognini-Bonelli (2001)

found that apart from negative sentences, interrogative sentences,

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and conditional sentences, ‗any‘ can also be used in the ‗semi-

negative sentences‘ and ‗lexicalised negative sentences‘structures.

The present study adopted this inductive approach to

investigate PP in both the general and textbook corpora. Meanings

of PP were interpreted on the basis of textual patterns found in the

corpora under study. Identification of the meanings might differ

from or overlap with the existing descriptions outlined in Section

2, but they all can be explained on the basis of textual patterns in

which each case of PP occurs.

Analysis of PP in BE2006 and AME2006

The first step in pattern-meaning analysis was extracting

the PP concordance lines from BE2006 and AME2006. In order to

examine the PP construction in the two corpora, query expressions

of PP were set. These include both non-contracted and contracted

forms of PP:

1. have + past participle verb

2. has + past participle verb

3. ‘ve + past participle verb

4. ‘s + past participle verb

Table 1 below shows the query expressions used to search

for the PP construction. We excluded instances of the present

perfect construction with modal verbs, e.g. may have been and

should have been, because modal verbs have impacts on meanings

and uses of the expressions. With the above query expressions, a

total of 5,390 and 4,672 concordance lines were derived in

BE2006 and AME2006, respectively. These concordances were

then thinned to 680 concordance lines in each general corpus,

altogether making up 1,360 concordance lines in total. This is so

that the number of concordance lines to be studied in the two

general corpora matches that of PP samples found in TB.

Consequently, after all data were filtered and thinned, each

concordance line was studied. Those which express a similar

group of PP meaning were put together in a notional group. The

concordance lines in each group were then examined in terms of

the verbs in the PP construction and lexical items that co-occur

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with the tense. This is in order to examine formal patterns that

contribute to different meanings or uses of PP in each group and

to find out if the concordance lines in each functional group share

any common features.

As meaning in language can be fuzzy, apart from the

researcher, co-raters who are native speakers of English of British

and American English were asked to identify meanings of each

concordance line. This is to enhance the degree of reliability in our

interpretation of meanings associated with each case of PP. Inter-

rater reliability in the present study was calculated by means of

percentage agreement. The percentage agreement in the present

study reaches 86.09% for BE2006 and AME2006, higher than the

acceptable rate of 75%, as noted in Mackey & Gass (2016).

Analysis of PP in TB

A corpus of PP samples in textbooks was analyzed in

comparison with those in the general corpora. The 1,360 instances

of PP in TB were generated through AntConc (Anthony, 2014).

These include both non-contracted and contracted forms:

1. have + past participle verb

2. has + past participle verb

3. ‘ve + past participle verb

4. ‘s + past participle verb

Table 1: Query expressions for searching the PP construction in general

corpora

Forms

Query Expressions

have + past participle verb

have <<2>> *_VVN

have <<2>> *_VBN

has + past participle verb

has <<2>> *_VVN

has <<2>> *_VBN

've + past participle verb

've <<2>> *_VVN

've <<2>> *_VBN

's + past participle verb

's_VHZ <<2>> *_VVN

's_VHZ <<2>> *_VBN

Note: <<2>> represents a query for searching two items within a

specified range of another

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*_VVN represents a query for searching the past participle form of

lexical verbs

*_VBN represents a query for searching the past participle form of

the verb BE: been

‘s_VHZ represents a query for searching the shorten form of the

verb HAVE

(Hoffmann et al., 2008)

Similar to the analysis of general corpora, the concordance

lines with modal verbs found in TB were excluded. After all data

from TB were filtered, similar steps were taken in analysis of PP

samples in TB, including the use of co-raters, in which case the

percentage agreement reaches 84.72%. Results from TB were then

compared to those from general corpora to see if patterns and

meanings of PP in the general corpora and in textbooks

correspond with one another.

It should also be noted that in order to find out whether

differences between general corpora and PP samples in textbooks

are significant, the chi-square goodness-of-fit test was also

conducted in the present study. The significance level (α) in the

present study is at p 0.05.

Results and Discussion

Results from the study are presented and discussed here in

two sub-sections. Section 6.1 describes meanings and patterns of

PP found in the qualitative concordance analysis of PP samples

from general and textbook corpora. Section 6.2 presents and

compares frequencies of PP meanings in general and textbook

corpora.

Meanings and patterns of PP in general corpora and

textbooks

This sub-section aims to answer the first research question

stated earlier: What are

meanings of PP that emerge from corpus data and what co-

occurrence patterns are associated to each of them? On the basis

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of textual patterns found in the corpora under study, seven

groups of PP meanings are found. These include:

1) Accomplishment with relevance to the present

2) Continuing from past to the present

3) Change of condition

4) Experience

5) Recency

6) Discovery

7) Possession

Details on each category of PP meanings including their

verb types and patterns are explained in 6.1.1 below.

Accomplishment with relevance to the present

This group of meaning indicates an action or event which

has already finished in the past but has some kind of relevance to

the present. This meaning can be realized formally through the

use of an accomplishment verb – a semantic type of verbs

classified as telic, durative, and dynamic – in the PP construction.

This means that the verb has a finishing point, occupies time, and

is not stative (Vendler, 1967). When an accomplishment verb is

used in the PP construction, it can indicate an action or event

which has already finished or completed, but the PP is surrounded

by the propositions expressed in the present tense, indicating its

relevance to the time of communication. The pattern of

‗accomplishment with relevance to the present‘ is therefore

summarized as follows.

Examples (1) – (3) demonstrate the pattern ‗accomplishment with

relevance to the present‘ in the corpora under study.

(1) At a national level over 500 young people have been

elected to the UK Youth Parliament (UKYP). Run by

young people for young people, UKYP provides

opportunities for 11-18 year olds to use their energy and

HAVE + Past participle accomplishment verb + the present tense

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passion to bring about social change. (BE2006, H03;

emphasis added)

(2) Someone has come for her - someone is here!

(AME2006, K14; emphasis added)

(3) The children have made loads of biscuits. Do you want

to take some home with you? (TB; emphasis added)

Example (1) shows that the action of ‗electing‘ was already

completed in the past because of an accomplishment verb

‗elected‘. However, the verb is embedded the PP construction to

show that the action of ‗electing‘ is relevant to the current point of

discussion, which is reflected by the surrounding contextual

information conveyed in the present tense.

Example (2) presents a clear manifestation of relevance of

the past action to the present time. That is, the accomplishment

verb ‗come‘ is embedded in the PP construction, co-occurring with

the present tense ―someone is here‖ showing that the past and the

present time are linked together.

Example (3) shows the PP sample from TB with a similar

semantic type of verb, i.e. an accomplishment verb ‗made‘, and

similar co-occurrence patterns, i.e. the present tense.

Continuing from past to the present

The meaning group ‗continuing from past to the present‘ is

used to talk about an action or event which occurred in the past

and that action or event still continues to the present. This group

of meaning is found to occur with particular groups of verbs, i.e.

state and activity verbs, according to Vendler‘s (1967) verb

categorization. These two types of verbs occupy time and have no

finishing point; thus, they can be used to convey the meaning of

‗continuing from past to the present‘ because both types of verbs

can indicate an action or event which has not yet completed.

Besides the verb types, the meaning ‗continuing from past to the

present‘ is also sometimes found to co-occur with time expressions

indicating frequency and duration, such as ‗always‘, ‗for‘ and

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‗since‘. Thus, the pattern for ‗continuing from past to the present‘

is summarized as follows:

Examples (4) – (6) illustrate this meaning.

(4) The Sun has always been a great supporter of our

troops and I would ask that you, the readers,

continue with that support for all our troops.

(BE2006, B06; emphasis added)

(5) Now on FatCat Records with Animal Collective and

equally atmospheric compatriot Sigur Rs, the band

has persisted for almost a decade. (AME2006, F15;

emphasis added)

(6) Donald Roessler has lived on his farm for most of his

life. (TB; emphasis added)

The three examples above show that the PP constructions

with the ‗continuing from past to the present‘ meaning select verbs

which are durative, i.e. ‗been‘, ‗persisted‘, and ‗lived‘. These

constructions also co-occur with time adverbials indicating

duration.

It should also be noted that the PP meaning concerning a

repeated action, noted in Comrie (1975), Eastwood (1995), and

Greenbaum and Nelson (2002), is included in this group of

meaning since it indicates an action or event which repeatedly

occurs over and over and continues to the present time. More

importantly, the co-occurrence patterns for the PP construction

indicating a repeated action can be seen from activity and

accomplishment verbs together with time adverbials indicating

repetition, e.g. ‗again and again‘ and ‗year after year‘. This can be

demonstrated by Examples (7) – (8).

(7) Year after year, pensioners have protested that they

are treated almost like an invisible section of the

population. (BE2006, B25; emphasis added)

(8) She’s asked me the same exact question every day

this summer. (AME2006, P21; emphasis added)

HAVE + Past participle state/activity verb + [Time adverbial e.g. always/since/ for]

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Change of condition

This group of PP meaning indicates changes that occur in

the past and have an impact on the present time. This group of

meaning can be realized through a specific group of verb, i.e.

those which denote change of states or conditions, e.g. ‗change‘,

‗adapt‘, ‗transform‘, improve‘, and ‗become‘ (McArthur, 1981). It is

also observed that the ‗change of condition‘ meaning co-occurs

with the present tense, thereby suggesting an impact of changes

on the present. A specific pattern for this meaning group is shown

below:

Examples (9) – (11) illustrate this meaning.

(9) Since the 1990s, the community has become a more

diverse group: Cardiff and Newport are now home to

Somalis from the south, e.g. Mogadishu, as well as the

north. (BE2006, G53; emphasis added)

(10) Specifically, that entertainment values have

transformed what we used to call news, and

individuals with independent voices are routinely shut

out of the public discourse. (AME2006, F21; emphasis

added)

(11) In Japan, people have become fanatics of flamenco

and there are hundreds of dance schools around the

country. (TB; emphasis added)

It should be emphasized here that ‗change of condition‘ can

be considered as a new group of meaning emerging from the

corpus data in the present study. Because of the specificity of verb

group, this group of meaning is separated from the others. (See

Figure 1 for concordance lines illustrating the group ‗change of

condition‘ with a specific group of verb – ‗change‘ verb).

HAVE + Past participle verb denoting ‘change’ + the present tense

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Figure 1: Samples of concordance lines of ‗change of condition‘ in general corpora

Experience

This group expresses the meaning about an experience one

had in the past. With regard to a semantic type of verbs, it is

found that the ‗experience‘ group selects verbs denoting sensory,

such as ‗see‘, ‗hear‘, ‗experience‘, ‗notice‘, and ‗taste‘ (McArthur,

1981). It also co-occurs with the present tense or an adverbial

indicating the present time, e.g. ‗now‘, which indicates that a past

experience still matters at present. The pattern for ‗experience‘ is

therefore summarized as follows.

Examples (12) – (14) illustrate this group of meaning.

(12) Now people have seen the magnitude of what

happened between the Sunnis and the Shi'ites, we

can only pray that nothing else like this or even the

assassination of a prominent religious leader takes

place because the next time Iraq will certainly blow

up. (BE2006, A35; emphasis added)

(13) ―Over the past three years, we have seen the length

of pregnancy extended by two to two-and-a-half

weeks,‖ says Martha Delehanty, Verizon Wireless‘s

vice president of human resources. (AME2006, E30;

emphasis added)

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(14) Have you heard the news? Louise has left her job!

(TB; emphasis added)

Recency

This group of meaning indicates an action or event which

recently occurred. It is found that this functional group contains

an accomplishment verb, and the construction frequently co-

occurs with the adverbials, ‗just‘ and ‗recently‘. This is

summarized in the pattern below:

Examples (15) – (17) demonstrate this group of meaning.

(15) I’ve just listened to [Sarah] crying down the phone.

(BE2006, C09; emphasis added)

(16) A couple of states over in Arizona for example, there's

Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West, James Turrell's

Roden Crater, Paolo Soleri's Arcosanti; and Jeff Bezos,

the Amazon.com billionaire, has recently bought

239,000 acres of land north of Marfa where he intends

to build a spaceport. (AME2006, J62; emphasis added)

(17) They have recently improved this concert hall. (TB;

emphasis added)

Discovery

‗Discovery‘ is a group of PP meaning used to indicate an act

of discovering or finding something that already occurred, and the

findings are relevant to the point under discussion. It can be

formally realized by an accomplishment verb in a specific semantic

field, i.e. verbs indicating finding, showing, and investigating

(McArthur, 1981). This group of verb, according to McArthur

(1981), is a general or abstract term related to discovery or

exposure, e.g. ‗find‘, ‗show‘, ‗expose‘, ‗reveal‘, ‗demonstrate‘,

‗exhibit‘, ‗indicate‘, ‗observe‘, and ‗examine‘. Patterns of the group

‗discovery‘ are thus summarized as follows.

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Examples (18) – (20) show the PP samples for the ‗discovery‘ group

from the corpora under study.

(18) This pragmatic study has demonstrated a

statistically significant difference between groups

undertaking three different types of conservative

hand treatments. (BE2006, J40; emphasis added)

(19) But Bush‘s advisers believe he has discovered a

formula for dealing with the Continent that is

working for him. (AME2006, A12; emphasis added)

(20) But a joint study by the Canadian Wildlife Service

(CWS) and Nasa published in the scientific journal

Arctic this week has found that, far from thriving,

the polar bear is at potentially irreversible risk from

global warming. (TB; emphasis added)

It should be noted that apart from the ‗change of condition‘

group, this group is also regarded as a new notional group

emerging from the corpus data in the present study. This

conceptual group is treated as a separate group because of its

pattern, which contains the verb type with a specific semantic

property, i.e. finding and showing.

Possession

The PP construction can also be used to indicate an

idiomatic meaning related to possession which indicates the state

in which one has or owns something. This group of meaning

occurs in the present perfect construction with the verb ‗got‘ only.

Thus, we can summarize the pattern for ‗possession‘ as: HAVE +

got. This is illustrated in Examples (21) – (23).

(21) They’ve got a lunchtime special on; a pie, a pint and

a woman, eighty pence. (BE2006, G08; emphasis

added)

(22) He’s got some trouble. (AME2006, A28; emphasis

added)

(23) It depends to a large extent on where they live and

how much money they’ve got. (TB; emphasis added)

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As may be seen, by adopting the corpus-driven approach,

some of these seven meaning groups are found to overlap with the

meanings identified in previous works outlined in Section 2 above.

These include (1) ‗accomplishment with relevance to the present‘,

(2) ‗continuing from past to the present‘, (3) ‗experience‘, and (4)

‗recency‘. The groups ‗accomplishment with relevance to the

present‘ and ‗recency‘ may be seen as similar to what Comrie

(1975) and Kearns (2011) addressed as ‗the perfect of

result/current result states‘ and ‗recent actions‘, respectively. The

group ‗continuing from past to the present‘ overlaps with the

meaning ‗continuing action/ event/ state from the past to the

present‘ as raised in Comrie (1975), Quirk et al. (1985), Eastwood

(1995), Greenbaum and Nelson (2002), and Kearns (2011). The

group ‗experience‘ is similar to ‗experiential states‘ mentioned in

Comrie (1975).

At the same time, notional groups, which are different from

the previous studies and reference grammar, emerge from the

analysis in the present study. These include (1) ‗change of

condition‘, (2) ‗discovery‘, and (3) ‗possession‘. These notional

groups of meanings are more specific than those in the literature

as particular semantic groups of verbs have repeatedly been found

to be associated with the PP constructions (see their frequencies in

Section 6.2 below). This suggests that the PP construction, i.e.

HAVE + past participle verb, has a tendency to select some

particular groups of verbs in the construction. These semantically

specific groups of PP meanings might be argued to be part of some

more general group indicated above. However, we have

distinguished them from the other groups because verbs in these

meaning groups are closely related in their semantic properties

while verbs in other groups are only loosely so in their general

characteristics, i.e. telic/atelic, durative/non-durative, and

stative/dynamic.

It is also found that the PP construction co-occurs with

particular groups of lexical items in its close environment. For

example, the group ‗continuing from past to the present‘ co-occurs

with adverbials indicating duration, e.g. ‗always‘, ‗since‘, and ‗for‘.

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The group ‗recency‘ co-occurs with adverbials indicating

recentness, for example, ‗just‘ and ‗recently‘. Thus, it can be

concluded that the meanings of the PP construction as found in

the present study are determined by co-occurrence patterns.

Distribution of meanings and patterns of PP in general

corpora and textbooks

In this sub-section, findings are reported and discussed in

light of the second and third research questions, reproduced here

for ease of reference:

(2) Based on the meaning categories identified through the corpus

data, what are major uses of the PP, given their frequencies?

(3) To what extent do the meanings, forms and distribution

patterns found in general corpora correlate with those found in

textbooks used by Thai universities?

The quantitative analysis shows that the above seven

notional groups of PP, though found in all the three given corpora

as mentioned in 6.1, differ in their proportions of occurrences, as

demonstrated through their frequencies and percentages

presented in Table 2 and Figure 2 below. It should be noted here

that for the purpose of the present study, we focus on the overall

quantitative results from an examination of the general and

textbook corpora even though we are aware that the issue of

variety distinctions can be an important factor in the description

of PP uses, as reflected by our choices of data from both British

and American general corpora as well as textbook publishers.

However, upon the quantitative analysis, we have found that there

is an overall similar tendency in which PP is used in the two

general corpora, i.e. BE2006 and AME2006. Only two of the seven

notional groups, i.e. ‗recency‘ and ‗possession‘, were found to

suggest significant differences between British and American

English. These two groups of PP meanings, however, occur

slightly, not only in both general corpora but also in individual

textbook samples in TB. Their relatively low frequencies thereby

cannot be taken to indicate a correlation between British and

American textbook publishers and varieties. We therefore focus on

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the general tendencies in which PP occurs in real use and in

textbooks in this paper. A thorough discussion on distinction

between PP uses in the two major English varieties and

distributions of PP meanings in individual textbooks in our TB

corpus can be found in Chareonkul (2018).

Table 2: Groups of meanings found in the corpora under study

Groups of meanings

General corpora

Textbooks

P-value

Frequency

1. Accomplishment

with relevance to

the present

617

45.37

332

24.41

<0.001

2. Continuing from

past to the

present

521

38.31

613

45.08

0.006

3. Change of

condition

5.22

2.72

0.001

4. Experience

3.16

270

19.85

<0.001

5. Recency

2.43

3.06

0.077

6. Discovery

2.72

2.06

0.264

7. Idiomatic

meaning related

to ‗possession‘

2.79

2.28

0.399

Total

1360

100.00

1360

100.00

Note: The significance level is at p 0.05

Accomplis

hment with

relevance

to the

present

Continuing

from the

past to the

present

Change of

condition

Experience Recency Discovery

Idiomatic

meaning

related to

'possession'

General Corpora

45.37% 38.31% 5.22% 3.16% 2.43% 2.72% 2.79%

Textbooks

24.41% 45.08% 2.72% 19.85% 3.60% 2.06% 2.28%

0.00%

5.00%

10.00%

15.00%

20.00%

25.00%

30.00%

35.00%

40.00%

45.00%

50.00%

Figure 2: Distribution patterns of seven groups of PP meanings

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Based on frequencies and percentages in general corpora,

the seven groups of PP meanings can be divided into two

categories, i.e. core and non-core meanings of PP. The core

meanings include the groups ‗accomplishment with relevance to

the present‘ and ‗continuing from the past to the present‘ with the

relative frequencies of 45.37% and 38.31% of all the 1,360

concordance lines, respectively. These two groups are considered

as core meanings of PP because their percentages are obviously

higher than the other five meaning groups, whose percentages are

less than 10% of BE2006 and AME2006 samples and thus can be

considered relatively marginal uses of PP. Considering our

research question 2, it can therefore be stated that, on the

quantitative basis, major uses of PP are ‗accomplishment with

relevance to the present‘ and ‗continuing from the past to the

present‘, with the former being the most dominant usage.

In TB, the core meanings of the PP are found to correspond

to those in the general corpora. These include the groups

‗continuing from the past to the present‘ and ‗accomplishment

with relevance to the present‘. However, as shown in Table 2 and

Figure 2, the rankings for these two groups of meaning swap;

while the groups ‗accomplishment with relevance to the present‘

and ‗continuing from the past to the present‘ are ranked as first

and second in the general corpora, respectively, TB features

‗continuing from the past to the present‘ as the most frequent,

followed by ‗accomplishment with relevance to the present‘.

Moreover, the group ‗experience‘, which has a very low

frequency in the general corpora, is significantly highlighted in TB

(p<0.001). Upon a close look, this meaning group is found in six

out of the ten sampled textbooks. In addition, it is observed that

the textbooks under study tend to present this group of meaning

with distinctive patterns. That is, in TB, 159 out of 270

concordance lines illustrating the meaning ‗experience‘ (58.89%)

are all expressed through the interrogative phraseology, e.g. ‗Have

you ever + V?‘ and ‗Have you + V?‘ (See Figure 3). The high

frequency of these two patterns comes from dialogues extensively

presented in TB. From a pedagogical point of view, the

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predominance of these patterns can affect learners in that they

can particularly prime learners for these particular patterns, as

Hoey (2007: 8) explained:

We are primed by each encounter so that when we come

to use the word (or syllable or combination of words) we

characteristically replicate the contexts in which we had

previously encountered it.

In this case, it may be speculated that Thai learners are

likely to be especially primed for the ‗experience‘ meaning with the

patterns ‗Have you ever + V?‘ and ‗Have you + V?‘, when in fact,

there are several other meanings and patterns of PP. Indeed,

Thumvichit (2016) has found that the pattern ‗Have you ever + V?‘

is the most frequently used PP pattern in the Thai Learner English

Corpus (TLEC). The focus on learner input in this study thereby

has findings that suggest correspondence with that on Thai

learner output.

Figure 3: Sample concordance lines of ‗experience‘ with an interrogative

form in TB

Apart from the particularly high frequency of a specific

group of PP meanings and patterns in TB, it has been found that

some groups do not tend to receive much attention in textbooks.

To demonstrate, it can be seen from Figure 2 that the relative

frequency of the ‗accomplishment with relevance to the present‘

group in TB, though being ranked second, is significantly lower

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than that in the general corpora, wherein this meaning is most

commonly found. This is also the case with the ‗change of

condition‘ group. Hence, it seems that textbooks used in Thai

universities are not likely to serve to prime Thai EFL learners with

such common uses of PP as ‗accomplishment with relevance to the

present‘.

It can thus be summarized, in relations to our research

question 3, that textbooks also present meanings of PP that are

found in authentic use. However, these meanings tend to be

presented in proportions different from the core and non-core

patterns found in general corpora. This suggests that although

textbooks capture all the meanings expressed in real-life

communication, they tend to emphasize uses of PP that are more

or less different from real use. Some meanings, and even forms,

are highlighted, e.g. the ‗experience‘ group with the form: ‗Have

you (ever) + perception/ cognition verb‘, whereas some core

meaning groups in authentic use, e.g. ‗accomplishment with

relevance to the present‘ and ‗change of condition‘ do not tend to

be featured in textbooks.

Such over- and under-presentations of some groups of PP

uses in the sampled textbooks point to a mismatch between

textbooks and the real language use. According to Richards (2001:

13), this might be because textbooks tend to be specially written

for pedagogical purposes, and that there are other criteria to

consider for developing teaching materials apart from frequency of

a particular grammatical features, i.e. simplicity and learnability:

Frequency may also compete with other criteria. The

present continuous is not one of the most frequent verb

forms in English, yet it is often introduced early in a

language course because it is relatively easy to

demonstrate and practice in a classroom context.

Although we agree that factors other than frequency are

also important, we argue that frequency should not be discarded

in favor of simplicity and learnability. As Römer (2004) has

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pointed out, frequencies point to words and structures that are

common in language use. Without frequency information, ―it is

difficult to decide what should be included in teaching materials‖

(Römer, 2004 as cited in Khojasteh and Shokrpour, 2014). In the

case of PP, for example, since the group ‗accomplishment with

relevance to the present‘ is found to be the most common use of

PP, it should be highlighted to learners.

Furthermore, although we argue that the core meanings of

PP should receive more attention in textbooks, it does not mean

that the non-core meanings can be neglected. The presentation of

non-core meanings and patterns is also important. As Barlow

(1996: 11) stated in his study on the patterns of reflexives, a

knowledge of ―less frequent patterns is important in moving the

language learner from intermediate to more advanced levels of

proﬁciency.‖ In the present study, it can be observed that

textbooks do not ignore less frequent meanings and patterns

because relatively marginal uses like ‗recency‘, ‗discovery‘, and

‗possession‘ are also found in TB. Nevertheless, the ‗change of

condition‘ group is significantly rare. Therefore, it is suggested

that textbook authors and developers pay attention to this group

of meaning as it is an important part in moving learners towards a

more advanced level.

That said, it must be emphasized that the present study

does not suggest that textbooks should only comply with the exact

frequency of patterns and meanings found from general corpora.

We are aware that textbooks have pedagogical purposes while

general corpora contain samples of language use in different

contexts. We hope to show that insights from corpora are helpful

in providing essential information for EFL practitioners, e.g. that

there is correlation between meanings and patterns of PP and that

some meaning groups are more frequently used than the others.

These can benefit EFL practitioners in the development of

textbooks and teaching materials.

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Conclusion

The present study adopts a corpus-driven approach to the

English present perfect and the correlation between general and

textbook corpora. Thanks to this, a novel description of seven uses

of the present perfect has been proposed on the basis of the

pattern-meaning relationship. The emphasis on the

interconnectedness between meanings and patterns of PP is

beneficial to linguistic descriptions, particularly in the pedagogical

context, in that it can make the semantic or functional description

of PP precise and accountable with concrete textual patterns. Also,

the study has provided quantitative empirical evidence that can

lead to differentiation between core and non-core uses of the

present perfect, as well as to a comparison between real-life and

taught grammar. These quantitative discrepancies in turn hint at

a mismatch between authentic and taught grammar in some

aspects. Hence, both qualitative and quantitative results of the

study can be applied to EFL pedagogical practices. For instance,

teachers and textbook developers can highlight some common

uses of the present perfect and point out the relationship between

patterns and meanings to learners. On a more general plane, the

study illustrates a corpus linguistic contribution to an integration

of English linguistic and applied linguistic research. Further

studies can investigate other grammatical features in general

corpora and textbooks or examine textbooks used for various

levels of learners in order to compare how textbooks from different

proficiency levels present the present perfect meanings and

patterns.

The Authors

Chanakarn Chareonkul, the corresponding author, is an

English instructor in higher education in Thailand. She received

her Master‘s Degree in English from Faculty of Arts,

Chulalongkorn University. Her research interests are in the areas

of corpus linguistics and English language learning and teaching.

Raksangob Wijitsopon is an Associate Professor at

Department of English, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University.

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She received her PhD in Applied Linguistics from Lancaster

University, the UK. Her research interests include corpus

linguistics, stylistics, discourse analysis and applications of these

three fields to English language teaching and learning. She can be

reached at rwijitsopo[email protected] and [email protected].

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