'Have you eaten?' and 'Did you eat?'

[Paul B. Gallagher]

Dustin Hosseini wrote:

> In other words, the present perfect in English, which is used to inquire
> about the general fact of an action having been or not been performed, can
> generally be rendered into Russian using its imperfect aspect.  
> 
> While at the same time, we can render the English language's past simple
> into Russian by using the perfect aspect, since the past simple usually is
> used to inquire about whether an action occured at all.  
> 
> Is that correct?  

For me, the present perfect inquires whether it happened at all, with no 
expectation as to timing (other than the fact that it was before the 
present), while the simple past inquires whether it happened at some 
particular time (the time it was expected to happen). In general, the 
perfect tenses imply relevance to the time frame of the narrative 
(present perfect actions are relevant to the present time frame, past 
perfect actions are relevant to the speaker's chosen past time frame). 
So it's the opposite of what you describe.

Thus, if I'm asked "have you eaten (yet)?" the speaker wants to know if 
I'm now hungry or sated, probably with a view to offering me a meal, 
whereas if he asks "did you eat?" he had an expectation that I was going 
to eat at some particular time and wants me to confirm/deny that events 
transpired as expected (in the past time frame of his narrative); he may 
have no food to offer.

The FL speakers who get this most obviously wrong most often in my 
experience are those whose native language is German or French, whose 
native tenses have just the opposite usage.

-- 
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
pbg translations, inc.
"Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
http://pbg-translations.com

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