Radio Talk: French and English perfects on air

It has often been observed that present perfect forms in English and French have quite differing functions. These perfects are considered here in a parallel description of English and French radio talk. An examination of talk shows and news bulletins in two corpora of the same length and from the same day illustrates some interesting points with regards to the use of the perfect in different genres, and the contrasting functions of the perfect in the two languages. It is concluded that radio talk is a collection of sub-genres within a single environmental context. Tense distribution and usage in each language is one element that contributes to this particular pattern.