I have been through several articles on the Stackexchange, and through them, I was able to learn that the reading of ている, can be for both Continuous Tense and Perfect Tense, in both instant state change and durative verb. However, I would only like to stick to those pesky durative verbs (e.g. 食べる, 作る etc.)
The problem that I confront when reading Japanese is, when does ている interpret as Perfect Tense, and when does it interpret as Continuous Tense. E.g. Let us say, my mom asks me, お祖母さんが食べたか? If i answer by saying お祖母さんが食べています it can mean, both My grandmother has eaten the food, and that my grandmother is eating the food. However, what I wanted to imply by using ている was that she has eaten the food i.e. to say, the perfect tense.
Problem like these often occur, with me, when I am confronted with ている. One more E.g., there was a two line dialogue:
Yamada-san: あなたは何個のクッキーを作っていますか?
Sakura-san: 私は20個のクッキーを作っています
Now, if you read these lines, it can carry both, continuous, as well as perfect tense, and the English translation provided by the dialogue creator is perfect i.e. I have made 20 cookies. So, problems like these usually occur, wherein the sentence and the theme can give both readings.
So, my first question is, when is ている in durative/action verbs is to be taken as perfect tense and when as a continuous tense? Could you please give me some practical examples and tips that I could use to differentiate?
So, my second question is, do Japanese speakers, especially natives, usually interpret ている in action/durative verbs like 食べる, 作る, in perfect tense or as continuous?
Further, when I looked into the Japanese grammar, I found out two adverbs, まだ and もう which also gave a perfect reading. Wherein, もう gave a positive perfect tense reading, when using with the past tense (た)e.g. もう食べた (I have eaten), and まだ usually giving negative perfect tense reading, while occurring with ていません e.g. まだ食べていません (I have not eaten). Also, using ~ことがある
- So, my third question is, whether the one of/sole purpose of using adverbs もう and まだ, is to remove the conflict, and confusion, arising because of durative/action verbs having two tenses when using ている? E.g. does the use of もう食べた, instead of plain 食べています (which also has the same perfect meaning) to remove the confusion, when the person wants to tell his state that he has eaten the food?
Please note: I have been through a lot of Articles on Stackexchange (like 7-8), however, I was unable to find the answer that I was looking for pertaining to when to interpret ている as continuous and when to interpret it as perfect, so よろしくお願いいたします!. Further, however, I am not attaching links of the 7-8 Stackexchange articles to make this question short, so please don't mark this as duplicate on that ground.
ありがとうございます!