Present Perfect issue..

Question

Please take a look at the following sentences:

He claimed to have seen it before.

He claimed that he had seen it before.

Both the above sentences are correct and convey the same meaning. However, the first one uses Present perfect ("have seen") while the second one uses Past perfect ("had seen").

Can someone please let me know why this is so grammatically?

Thanks,
Bharosey.

Mister Micawber · Accepted Answer

The first one uses the infinitive; the 2nd uses the finite verb.

Rambharosey · Answer

Thanks Mr. Micawber. What I meant to ask was if there was some grammatical rule that was playing a part here...like..we can't use past perfect with Infinitive or something like that.

Regards,
Bharosey.

Mister Micawber · Answer

we can't use past perfect with Infinitive
Well, that's true, at any rate.

Eugene Leo · Answer

rambharoseyThanks Mr. Micawber. What I meant to ask was if there was some grammatical rule that was playing a part here...like..we can't use past perfect with Infinitive or something like that.Regards,Bharosey.

If you wish for grammatical stuff, here it is.

There're three types of active infinitives, a simple infinitive, a continuous infinitive and a perfect infinitive. If we take a verb "go", for instance, here are these three forms for it:

to go - simple
to be going - continuous
to have gone - perfect

What you saw there was a perfect infinitive. It was not using a certain time. For active voice, you can only form your infinitives as it's shown above.

Hassan Elbahi · Answer

Sorrey to tell you that they are not the same. This is because in these two sentences we have different tenses - Present Perfect and Past Perfect.
Accordinly, they have different meanings; the first shows that 'he have seen it - let us use the film - before'; that is, the time of speaking in this sentence is present time; but the second sentence shows that he had seen the film before, and the time of speaking is Past Time. Let me give you the two sentences in a context so that you can understand better.
(a)

Me: What about watching 'X' film?
Ahmed: No, I have seen it before.
(b)
Ahmed told me that he had seen the film before.

In sentece (b) it is neccessary to use the past perfect for the second action. This is because it shows that the second action happend before the first one.

I hope this help you.

Eugene Leo · Answer

Hassan ElbahiSorrey to tell you that they are not the same. This is because in these two sentences we have different tenses - Present Perfect and Past Perfect.Accordinly, they have different meanings; the first shows that 'he have seen it - let us use the film - before'; that is, the time of speaking in this sentence is present time; but the second sentence shows that he had seen the film before, and the time of speaking is Past Time. Let me give you the two sentences in a context so that you can understand better.(a)Me: What about watching 'X' film?Ahmed: No, I have seen it before.(b)Ahmed told me that he had seen the film before.In sentece (b) it is neccessary to use the past perfect for the second action. This is because it shows that the second action happend before the first one.I hope this help you.

Hassan, did you read my post above? That was not using Present Perfect tense. That was a perfect infinitive.

The verb "claim" employs two patterns of its usage: followed by an infinitive and followed by the second conditional. They are almost the same, the only difference is a shade of meaning which only makes sense to native speaker's ear.

But the infinitive for the first pattern was to be perfect in that case, because the action of "seeing" took place before it was claimed.

Present Perfect issue..

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