An interesting experiment on tense

In the explanation of English tense, I stress it is of most importance to explain tense with time relations between sentences. In the following I introduce an interesting experiment on the subject.

-- We have learned from grammars that, when there is a specific past time in the sentence, we use Simple Past:
Ex1: Yesterday we went to a department store.
-- We have also been taught that, if an action has happened in the past, but has an effect or result in the present, we use Present Perfect:
Ex2: We have bought many things.

These are the usual explanations for the two tenses. However, do grammar books tell us how to put these sentences or tenses together? As we do often express ourselves in more than one sentence, please look what happens if we put the two examples together:
Ex3: "Yesterday we went to a department store. *We have bought many things."

It doesn't sound right. It seems to us that, if putting these sentences together, we shall use Simple Past bought only, rather than Present Perfect. If this is true, we may see that, in a paragraph, there are some other rules controlling the choice of tenses. Actually, if we find out the time relations between tenses/sentences, such meanings as Current Relevancy, Perfective Aspect, Habit, Routine, Timeless Statement, or Immediacy, are not necessary.

One may try to cut any few sentences (better with different tenses) out of a paragraph and talk about the tenses among them. All we will talk about is time, and no meanings will be mentioned. That is why we all basically agree with the concept that tense is used to express time. However, if we cut only one sentence out of a paragraph, because we cannot see its time relation with another action, we must use some meanings (such as those above) to explain the tense. Therefore, there is not much truth in the meanings. This experiment has never failed in other forums.

For example, "These trees look beautiful in autumn" can be regarded as timeless. But if we put it into two sentences, it is not:
Ex: I grew trees in 1987. These trees look beautiful in autumn.
== The second sentence is now a present state after 1987. No one will think of timeless anymore.

Ex: They obtained legislation in 1966 and soon afterwards set up the LVR Park Authority. It now owns or occupies around 1040 ha of land and water and has brought into use 160 ha of water. 
== As can be objectively seen, owns and occupies do not relate Habitual Action, Permanency, Instantaneous Present, Routine, Or Timeless. We can hardly give a meaning to describe it. The actions are just at the present time.

Ex: For when we came into Macedonia, this body of ours had no rest, but we were harassed at every turn–conflicts on the outside, fears within. But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus, and not only by his coming but also by the comfort you had given him. (2 Corinthians 7:5-7)
== There is a contrast between comforts and comforted. This comfort is eternal. However, anything eternal can be seen as a completion because of the time relation to those Simple Past actions precedent to it. A series of actions, being linked up by Simple Past, allows the use of comforted.
Actually, from this example I have realized why we can say "I have eaten dinner". It is eternal that I eat dinner. Then why will we sometimes use Present Perfect to say it? It must be expressing a time relation to another action like a present initiation "Shall we dance?" But if we analyze "I have eaten dinner" alone, we will use current relevancy: now we are full, so we say "I have eaten dinner", a past action that has a reference to the present time.

Ex: "Last week we went to a new department store. We bought many things. I have introduced it to Ms Lee. She buys many things in the store these days."
== The second in Simple Past indicates it is in the same time frame with the first one. Present Perfect says a finish, but is not at the same time frame with Simple Past ahead. It is behind last week. The fourth is a present action, also outside the past time frame.

When we look at the tenses in an essay, all we see is the interrelations between past, present, and future. We won't use meanings anymore, like "The first one is a fact. And the second is also a fact. The third, current relevancy. And therefore we have a routine at last". Such analysis is impossible, because meanings cannot be related.

Your comments are invited.

The message behind this experiment is, because we have always explained tense wrongly with merely one sentence and one verb, we have got many redundant meanings. And the fact is, in putting many sentences together, we can explain tense by way of time only. It is a revolutionary idea in the theory of English tense.

As we see form above, if we don't know how to use time relations (between many sentences) to explain tense, the whole thing will be a failure. The following is brief account of how far grammars have got from explaining tense, on one-sentence only, where they cannot see the time relations.

The word Tense comes form Latin Tempus, meaning time. Indeed, grammarists have first agreed that tense is to used to express time. But there is a big trouble: there aren't as many notions of time as tenses. Take the common use of the three tenses -- Simple Past, Present Perfect, Simple Present -- for example: three tenses have to share only two notions of time: past and present. There is one tense too many. Therefore, grammarists elbow the agreement and switch a tense from time to a meaning: Simple Present denotes Habit. So, they may claim the two tenses left are for two notions of time: Present Perfect is for present time, and Simple Past is for past time.
-- This is why they claim Simple Present denotes Habit, drawing your attention away from time, and not mentioning 'present Habit'.
-- This is why some grammarists even call Simple Present action 'timeless'.
-- This is why they emphasize Present Perfect is a 'present tense'.
After all, they cannot rationalize that both Simple Present and Present Perfect denote the present time, can they?

Switching a tense from time to a meaning has broken the agreement to use tense, but grammar writers have thought it feasible temporarily, and that they may have updated it later, perhaps very soon. However, in doing so, they have to accept a little inconvenience: they cannot put the three tenses together for contrast. Have you ever seen they compare Simple Present with Present Perfect at all? Certainly not! If they do, students will instantly see which is the real owner of 'present time':
Ex: He works in that company. (a present action)
Ex: He has worked in that company. (a past action)
Rather, all we have seen from grammars is the comparison between Present Perfect and Simple Past. They will not put the three tenses together for a contrast. This avoidance has already become a must in the conventional grammar.

Even treating Simple Present unfairly, grammar writers are baffled by the Present Perfect tense alone, which can actually denote something either present or past:
Ex: He has worked there since 2001. (a present action)
Ex: He has worked there before/in the past. (a past action)
Therefore, the tense ITSELF is a contradiction, or a confusion, which drives grammar writers to their wit's end. The dual denotations are so obvious and so incompatible, but grammarians have always avoided the sharp incompatibility. Displaying firework in the explanation, they can make the two contradictory functions sound like not so contradictory. Nonetheless, unfortunately, the notions of time are once again not enough. Two notions of time, past and present, are not enough to share for Simple Past and the two contradictory notions of Present Perfect. Then again, grammars break the agreement further and switch a part of Present Perfect to meaning: denoting Result, Consequence, or Aspect.

If grammar writers still remember to emphasize the present time for Present Perfect, they may call its meaning Current Relevancy. Luckily, the bully Present Perfect still owns the present time. In contrast, grammars have never clearly pointed out that Simple Present denotes a Current Habit.

Because Present Perfect itself is a confusion containing two contradictory notions, it is a sheer difficulty if one wants to compare it further with Simple Past. The two tenses, Simple Past and Present Perfect, are a famous pair of nuisances in the explanation of tense. It is even very hard for scholars to tell the nuance in their usage. Obviously, a strategy has to be maneuvered to tell the difference, for the sake of students. This is why grammars preach "Present Perfect cannot stay with past time adverbials":
Ex: *He has worked there yesterday.
== The correct tense here should have been Simple Past.

However, in preaching so, they have done something that they thought, again, was temporary: to hide away unfavorable evidences -- those structures in which Present Perfect stays with past time adverbials:
Ex: He has worked there in the past three years.
In my terms, time adverbials in the pattern "in the past xx years" are called Past Family. Hiding them away from grammar books is a registered mark of the old approach in explaining tense. If you ask about the Past Family, grammarians can find many excuses to explain the pattern, switching past to last, for example, so the pattern "in the last xx years" doesn't sound like 'past'. The bad thing is, they still cannot find excuses to explain why all of grammar books or websites have missed the Past Family.

When will they update the grammar? When will they know the real use of tense is to tell the time relations between many sentences?

Hahahahaha! All you're childish work for nothing KLOOTZAK!

ouch, that was confusing...

good thing i never had to learn english :p

If you can point out one mistake, I will agree to you with the rest, for free.

Worrying too much about rules is a dangerous path when learning or teaching English (or any other language). Natives do not follow a flowchart when selecting a tense, and neither should non-native learners.

When rules are described for tenses, they are really just statements of very general situations in which the tenses are typically used. They are descriptive rather than prescriptive, as there are invariably many exceptions to the "rules." The best way to learn exactly how to use each tense is in actually speaking or writing the language, with corrections of every inappropriate use (accompanied by an explanation of why it is inappropriate in that context). It's much more time-consuming than trying to memorize a handful of over-generalizations, but it is much more accurate and useful as well.

>> It's much more time-consuming than trying to memorize a handful of over-generalizations, but it is much more accurate and useful as well.<<

I couldn't agree to you more. In any forums I challenged anyone to give any rule to me about tense, but there was none they could prove workable. Even the so-called 'golden rule' that Present Perfect doesn't stay with past time adverbials, is working only by hiding unfavorable evidence. For them, the second rule is meanings: Habit, Routine, Experience, etc. Do you know how difficult to handle the theory of Perfective Aspect, Current Relevancy, and Immediacy?

Then I recommended using the method of time relations. In explaining time relations between sentences, I could drop all the empty meanings above. I pointed out the rules we needed are as simple as these:
1. "Simple Present expresses present time." One more word is one more mistake.
2. "Simple Past expresses past time." One more word is one more mistake.
3. "The future tense expresses future time." One more word is one more mistake.
It seems to us that the acquirements of these rules are not much time-consuming. Don't you agree? I can use notions of time alone, without any meanings, to explain all kinds of tenses.

Comparatively, which method is more practical: Learning how to cut up a sentence and examine its tense? Or learning how to put many tenses/sentences together?