Do adjectives refer to the past or present when used with the perfect aspect?

Question

In a sentence like

I have eaten a red apple.

does the sentence translate to

I have eaten an apple that is red.

or

I have eaten an apple that was red.

In other sentences with present perfect like "I have found someone who has a car for us to drive," present tense verbs like "has a car" seem to be used, but I'm not sure if that applies to adjectives. Perfect aspects refer to the past, so it would seem strange to use "is red" rather than "was red" and I'm not sure why people tend to use present tense with present perfect like "has a car" rather than "had a car" in the first place, even if the former feels much more natural.

Answer 1

Perfect aspects refer to the past, so it would seem strange to use "is red" rather than "was red"

Perfect refers to completed actions, no matter when the action takes place.

"I have found someone who has a car for us to drive,"

In the above sentence there are two actions, one complete (I have found), and one incomplete (has a car). There is only one perfect action in the sentence, the finding of someone, which has been done. The possession of the car by that someone continues, so it is not perfect.

Perfect action may take place in the future:

By Friday, I will have eaten all those apples.

The action takes place in the future, and the action is perfect, as it is complete.

I have eaten a red apple.

Translates to nothing more than "I have eaten a red apple".

I have eaten an apple that was red.

This means "I have eaten an apple that was red (opposed to an apple of another color). "Red" , as an adjective, has nothing to do with tense. "Was" defines when.

I have eaten an apple that is red.

This means that "I have eaten an apple which is now red". I'm not sure I wish to imagine the situation that this statement might apply to.

I believe this question is partly based on a misunderstanding of what perfect means, and partly on a misunderstanding that adjectives can convey tense. I hope the misunderstandings are resolved.

Answer 2

The matter seems to revolve more around the state of the object being described (particularly, whether it continues to exist), rather than the action being described.

The action, however, may affect the state. So, "I have eaten a red apple" (or, more naturally in most situations, simply "I ate a red apple") results in the apple's being eaten, at which point it ceases to exist. Therefore "that was red" (i.e. before I finished eating it) makes sense, but "that is red" does not, because the apple isn't anything any more.

As for the expression "I have found someone who has a car for us to drive", the assumption is that finding the someone did not cause the car to cease to exist. Therefore, (modifying the sentence slightly to make the effect clearly w/r/t the question),

"I have found someone who has a car that is red for us to drive"

makes intuitive sense, while

"I have found someone who has a car that was red for us to drive" is problematic. Technically, it is more correct, because the speaker can only vouch for the car's condition as it was described or observed at the time of the finding, which is in the past. It could have been painted a different color, or even destroyed, in the interval between the moment the someone was found, and the moment the speaker makes this statement.

However, for practical purposes, this is seen to be quibbling. For one thing, if the car has been destroyed, it isn't available to be driven. So, the underlying assumption for the whole exercise to make sense must be that the car still exists.

So, "...that is red..." is used in practice.