the burning questions

[anamuan]

so. flist. i love english. i need to know what you think.

writing/english question: present perfect versus simple past?(example: "what's happened" v "what happened

Comments

[coffeeandice]

I almost feel responsible for this. And if I'm not, leave me be. :D

I prefer the simple past when asking someone to elaborate on a point, but the present perfect when asking why they look upset.

[anamuan]

how about when you're not asking 'what happened' but some other question? or what about when you're narrating?

[schwa]

I feel like I should look it up myself and then answer, because I have problems, too. I probably have a something in one of my old tutoring folders.

But with the what('s) happened, I'd say:
"Use the Simple Past to express the idea that an action started and finished at a specific time in the past."
So, situation: You're at a bar with friends and one of them suddenly runs off to the toilet and never comes back (lol) and you meet that person a few days later..
"What happened to you on Wednesday?" because Wed is a specific time in the past.

"We use the Present Perfect to say that an action happened at an unspecified time before now."
Situation: You're coming home and a friend is sitting on your doorstep, crying or covered in blood or something, what the fuck. Then I'd say:
"What has happened to you?" because when is not specified (you don't know if his/her cat died last week or two hours ago) or not important.

..but that's just the opinion of an ESL speaker XD

Reference:
Present Perfect Usage
Simple Past Usage

[anamuan]

hmm i guess i was thinking more in terms of 'do you have a preference for one or the other, particularly when you write' but i suppose the grammatical is a fair point. I like the different scenarios you've given. yay concrete examples!

[pixisticks]

I generally use 'what happened', and I don't think I've ever heard 'what's happened' used outside of old movies or British novels (although I'm sure it's used, I just haven't heard it). I prefer 'what happened' because 'what's happened', in my mind, kind of goes straight to 'what has happened', which sounds very formal and strange for everyday conversation. I guess the best way I can compare it is 何かあった？　VS　何があったの？　VS　何が起こりましたか。 although that's not entirely right, but sort of like that. Personally I think going from casual to formal it would be more like 'what happened' -> 'did something happen', rather than 'what's happened', but English is weird in that I don't think there's really a super formal way to say it? Or at least, not that I can think of without sounding like an awkward politic newsletter. 'What has occurred to cause you such ire?' lol

[anamuan]

interesting! so, there's no grammatical difference to you, but there is a pragmatic difference in the two tenses. so, question: is this true for the present perfect in general, or just when you're asking 'what happened?'

[pixisticks]

Not really. It just omits the 'has'. As for your question, I'm not super familiar with present perfect so you'd have to give me more examples. xD

[anamuan]

hmmm, for a conversational example,

yuuchan: "where's rhey?"
nikki: she's gone to the store
yuuchan: oh i see.

or

nikki: "where's rhey?"
yuuchan: she went to the store
nikki: oh i see.