Wednesday, 11 November 2015

perfect - Sequence of tenses in elaborate sentences?

Sorry I've been pelting you with my linguistic questions lately, but since I'm trying to do my best to make my English perfect, I just have to keep bothering you :)



Today's question regards something, I believe I could most adequatly refer to as the sequence of tenses. Without further ado:



While it's clear to me that when I use two separate verbs in one sentence, within the boundaries of one tense, the correct phrase should look like this:




I will go there and look for him.



I have been there and seen some serious shit.



I had broken the law and gotten shot three times, before I understood my mistakes.




And so on, random gibberish; these all are still correct, right?



Though somehow I became hesitant about whether a little more complicated sentence that I formulated would still be correct:




They are believed to have been there but not done a thing.




Something sounds a bit off for me here, but I'm not sure how I could fix it. "But not do a thing" isn't the right answer, I suppose, as it would clearly violate the verb tense consistency. Or perhaps I'm just overreacting and it's all okay?



Also, I would be highly grateful if you could point out my mistakes in any of my posts, should some inconsistencies occur.



Edit: Thank you so far, yet my doubts haven't been resolved completely yet :) I get that my sentences are correct, but would the last one still be if I were to say "but not have done a thing"? And if so, which one would you prefer, and would the latter case affect somehow the overall meaning?

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