Das Perfekt - Hast du das schon vergessen?

Wortstellung - Word Order - in German Statements of Fact

Present Perfect (or conversational past)

First Position	Second Position	3rd, 4th, 5th, etc. Position	Final Position
Subject	Helping Verb	Everything Else	Past Participle
Beispiele
Die Jungen	sind	gestern nach Washington	gefahren.
Du	hast	am Freitagmorgen Hausaufgabe	gemacht.
Das Mädchen	hat	mir letzten Monat das Deutschbuch	gegeben.

Review the timeline of verbal tenses in German. The present perfect describes actions that occurred in the past. It is used in conversation more frequently than the simple past tense, which also describe events that occurred in the past.

Notice two things. The helping verb is a form of haben or sein conjugated in the present tense. This is why we call this tense the present perfect: the helping verb is in the present tense. Notice also that this tense is a compound tense: there are two parts to the verb: the helping verb and the past participle. Compare with the present tense, which is a simple tense: only one word:

Hausaufgabe machen - to do homework

Ich mache Hausaufgabe. - present tense

Ich habe Hausaufgabe gemacht. - present perfect tense

As already mentioned, the helping verb in this verbal tense can be either sein or haben. How do you know which one to use for a particular verb? Here is a list of verbs which have sein as a helping verb. Do you see anything in common with these verbs?

gehen - to go
fahren - to drive, travel
laufen - to run
fliegen - to fly
kommen - to come
schwimmen - to swim
werden - to become
reisen - to travel

sein - to be
bleiben - to remain, stay
fallen - to fall
fliehen - to flee, run away
einsteigen - to board ( a train )
reiten - to ride a horse
springen - to jump
treten - to step

Anything in common? With three exceptions (sein, bleiben, werden) all these verbs describe motion toward a goal. This is general rule number 1:

verbs describing motion toward a goal have sein as the helping verb.

There is another general rule:

verbs that are intransitive, i.e., CANNOT or DO NOT have a direct object, have sein as the helping verb.

A transitive verb almost always must have a direct object in order for the sentence to have meaning. A person doesn't normally say I bring. The listener/reader anticipates a direct object; he wants to know WHAT is brought. Intransitive verbs do not govern direct objects; what the reader/listener does anticipate, however, is a prepositional phrase that indicates locality or time. Think about it. Can you go something? No, but you can go TO somewhere (the store, the bank, the Netherlands) AT some particular time; therefore gehen takes sein as a helping verb. Can you travel something? No, but you can travel TO someplace AT a particular time; therefore fahren takes sein as a helping verb.

So answer this question if you need to decide whether a verb takes sein or haben as the helping verb: can you (insert verb here here) something? If the answer is NO: sein is the helping verb. If the answer is YES: haben is the helping verb.

Remember these are general rules, and as always there are exceptions to these rules. Nothing in a language is written in stone.

Language Reasoning Skills

Exercises: Name the helping verb, haben or sein

An element in the middle slots can occupy the first position for emphasis. In that case, the Subject must then immediately follow the helping verb, i.e., the Subject will be in the third position:

Examples:

Nach Washington bin ich gefahren.

Kulis hat er gekauft

Next Page: Learn how to form the Past Participles of German Verbs. Do this over and over until you have memorized the participles.