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a Ik heb in Groningen gestudeerd.
b Ik studeerde in Groningen.
In sentence a, the possible situation is that Erik is in a job interview and
he is giving the interviewer information that is relevant for the present
moment. The listener is not taken into the past. Erik wouldn’t have the
same effect with sentence b. Sentence b just gives a recount of a period
in Erik’s past, and it might be in a conversation with a friend in the context
of life stories being told. The sentence could be followed by . . . toen
ik Sanne ontmoette ‘when I met Sanne’. Another example:
Ik heb een nieuwe fiets gekocht. Kijk, het licht is nu al kapot. Toen ik
hem kocht, werkte alles perfekt.
I bought a new bike. Look, the light is already broken. When I bought
it, everything worked perfectly.
Buying the bike is an isolated event in the past, told from the perspective
of the present. The present moment is the broken light being shown to
the listener. In the sentence Toen ik hem kocht ..., the listener is taken
into the past, and the speaker is describing the past moment. Sentences
beginning with the subordinating conjunction toen describing the past, therefore,
should be in the simple past, not in the present perfect. Another
example:
Erik en Sanne hebben de boerderij verbouwd.
Erik and Sanne have remodeled the farm.
The present perfect is typically used to talk about completed actions with
a lasting effect in the present. Sentences in the present perfect point to a
result. Other such examples are:
Ik ben bij de dokter geweest.
I was at the doctor’s (so now I know what’s wrong).
Ik heb een nieuwe bril gekocht.
I bought new glasses (so now I can see better).
Ik heb het hele huis schoongemaakt.
I cleaned the whole house (so now it is clean).
The present perfect tense is also used to talk about the future. The sentence
in the present perfect is about an event or action that must be
completed before the action of the main sentence can take place. This is
also a form of the conditional.
The
present
perfect
tense
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