Final answer:
The perfect tense in English indicates completed actions with relevance to the present. Consistency in verb tense is important, with present perfect commonly used in the humanities and both past and present perfect in sciences. In literature analysis, the literary present tense is employed to evoke immediacy.
Step-by-step explanation:
The perfect tense in English refers to a verb form used to describe actions that have been completed at the time of speaking or have relevance to the present moment. The present perfect tense combines the present tense of the verb 'to have' (that is, 'have' or 'has') with the past participle of the main verb. For instance, in the phrase 'The historian Eduardo Galeano has argued that...', the present perfect tense is used to imply that Galeano's argument occurred in the past but is still relevant to the present discussion.
Verb tense consistency is key in writing, meaning that the writer should generally stick with one tense unless indicating a change in the time frame. Different disciplines tend to favor certain tenses; for example, humanities subjects often use the present or present perfect tense, while social and natural sciences might use the past or present perfect tense to describe past research findings or theories.
When analyzing literary works, the convention is to use the literary present tense, which treats the events of the story as occurring in the present moment, regardless of when the work was written or the tense the story is narrated in. This technique draws readers in and gives the text a sense of immediacy.