> Perfective vs perfect

> It is important to distinguish the term 'perfective' from 'perfect' [...]

> Perfect is the name of a grammatical category, a type of past tense;

> Perfective applies, as far as English is concerned, to a kind of semantic interpretation.

> The potentially confusing similarity between the terms reflects the fact that both are derived from a Latin word meaning "complete". There are, however, two entirely different kinds of completeness involved. With the perfect the key concept is that of past time. In examples like She has written a novel, the novel-writing is a completed event in the past. With the perfective it is a matter of viewing the situation as a complete whole, but it need not be in the past.

> In She will write a novel, for example, the novel-writing situation is still perfective, but it is in future time, not the past. It is best to think of the two terms as quite independent, with the similarity between them being based on their historical origin rather than being indicative of any close correlation between them.

> -- A Student's Introduction to English Grammar (Huddleston and Pullum) pp.43-44