Finished action

Question

Hello....1. Do all the below mean that the whole action is finished?Like, A means that Jane finished the whole book, and C means that I finished building the house, and D means that I finished writing a novel?*******A. Jane read a book (yesterday).B. Jane read the book (yesterday).C. I built a house (yesterday).D. I wrote a novel (yesterday).2. How about if it is in HAVE PP?Like,  "Jane has read ~" and "I have built a house" and "I have written a novel"?

Pructus · Accepted Answer

I asked #1 question to some native speakers and their answers were not the same.
This is so frustrating...

Vsuresh · Answer

I think this may help.

I read a book yesterday.

We use past tense since we mention yesterday, the time of the past action. And, generally this is understood as the person read the whole book.

I have read the book.

Here, use of present perfect suggests that the speaker wants to say something related to his reading of the book. And, note that we do not mention the time of action ( past) when we use present perfect tense.

Use of "the" suggests the speaker is referring to a particular book which the listener already knows. Here,Just as in the case with past tense, present perfect denotes the person has read the whole book.

CalifJim · Answer

pructusA. Jane read a book (yesterday).B. Jane read the book (yesterday).

Both of these imply that Jane read a/the whole book in one day.

pructusC. I built a house (yesterday).D. I wrote a novel (yesterday).

Likewise for these. The house was built (or the novel was written) all in one day.

If you omit 'yesterday', the actions in A through D are all finished, but they were not necessarily accomplished in one day.

pructus2. How about if it is in HAVE PP?

For those you must omit 'yesterday', and then there is no difference between this and the simple past (discussed above) in terms of finished actions.

I built a house. / I have built a house.

Both of these express the same fact about a finished action. Note that 'read (a book)', 'build (a house)', and 'write (a novel)' are all actions, not activities or states. Actions are finished acts; activities are unfinished. To change these actions to activities (unfinished) you use the continuous tenses:

I was building a house. / I have been building a house.

Neither of these implies that the action of building a house is finished. They say only that some progress has been made on the project, not that it is finished.

The same observations apply to the other predicates you asked about.

CJ

Finished action

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