For American English speakers wanting to express the same meanings as below, is the past simple an option?
I’ve lived here since 2001.
I haven’t seen John for the last two days.
I’ve had a headache all day.
I’ve lived here for 6 years.
The taxi has arrived.
I’ve cut my finger.
I’ve seen three films this week.
Have you ever ridden a camel?
I haven’t prepared the lesson yet.
I’ve never read “War and Peace”
I''ve known him since I was
born.
I've had three wives since then.
He has broken the record which has stood since the 1964 Olympics.
She has won three events so far.
They have killed eleven people in the last two weeks?
They've come and they've brought little Garry with them!
............
(Borrowed from the lovely MollyB, a great student.)
American moves
Moderators: Dimitris, maneki neko2, Lorikeet, Enrico Palazzo, superpeach, cecil2, Mr. Kalgukshi2
I've posed this question to American colleaguea on several occasions, and I get the feeling that age comes into play. In my experience, younger speakers seem more likely to say the two forms are interchangeable, while older speakers are more likely to consider it uneducated.
One colleague in his fifties put Did you eat yet? on a par with You done good in terms of acceptablility.
One colleague in his fifties put Did you eat yet? on a par with You done good in terms of acceptablility.
That's interesting, because many observers say that the present perfect (especially for recent indefinite past) has been on the decline for the past 20 to 25 years in AmE.I've posed this question to American colleaguea on several occasions, and I get the feeling that age comes into play. In my experience, younger speakers seem more likely to say the two forms are interchangeable, while older speakers are more likely to consider it uneducated.
Re: American moves
Some of these that I didn't okay might be said by some American dialect speakers, but probably isn't said by most educated Americans.
metal56 wrote:For American English speakers wanting to express the same meanings as below, is the past simple an option?
I’ve lived here since 2001.
I haven’t seen John for the last two days.
I’ve had a headache all day. Maybe ok.
I’ve lived here for 6 years.
The taxi has arrived. OK
I’ve cut my finger. OK
I’ve seen three films this week. OK
Have you ever ridden a camel?
I haven’t prepared the lesson yet.
I’ve never read “War and Peace” OK
I''ve known him since I was
born.
I've had three wives since then.
He has broken the record which has stood since the 1964 Olympics.
She has won three events so far. OK
They have killed eleven people in the last two weeks? OK
They've come and they've brought little Garry with them! OK
............
(Borrowed from the lovely MollyB, a great student.)
.What I was trying to explain, though, was that the present perfect is a present, not a past, tense, and that those same sentences placed in the past tense would have a different time frame and possibly a different meaning in context
Yes, Revel, I think we all know the grammar explanations.
That "can not" sounds a bit prescriptive. In standard AmE, the past simple is often modified to allow it to express recent indefinite past.I stand by my guns, though, in asserting that the simple past is preterit, that is, it’s over and done with and can not be modified, while the present perfect is present and leaves the listener the option of focusing on when you began the activity or the actuality of the activity in the present moment.
e.g.
Did you see Star Wars yet?
Such use has been noted and discussed in many academic texts, but not one researcher has been able to say for sure whether the use goes beyond the recent indefinite past form or not. That's why I asked the question above.
But don't go into an old-aged panic. This is still the case in most situations:
“If the reference is determined to being wholly in the past, either through a temporal specifier given in the same clause or when it is given in the preceding context, the preterite is the standard verb form in both varieties. If, on the other hand, the reference is to time which extends from the past up until the deictic zero-point, the present perfect is usually preferred in both varieties.”
From: The Perfect and the Preterite in Contemporary and Earlier English. By Johan Elsness.
Last edited by metal56 on Sat Oct 06, 2007 10:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
But bear in mind that I've only spoken to a handful of people and they weren't all from the same area. One speaker (mid 50s) was from New York and had lived in France for over 20 years, while one younger speaker (late 20s) was from Arkansas and has only been here for a couple of years. So generation might not be the only factor here.metal56 wrote:That's interesting, because many observers say that the present perfect (especially for recent indefinite past) has been on the decline for the past 20 to 25 years in AmE.I've posed this question to American colleaguea on several occasions, and I get the feeling that age comes into play. In my experience, younger speakers seem more likely to say the two forms are interchangeable, while older speakers are more likely to consider it uneducated.
I remember when High Fidelity was made into a movie set in New York rather than London, the phrase I haven't seen Reservoir Dogs yet became I haven't seen Evil Dead II yet i.e. they changed the movie, not the tense or aspect of the verb see.
Maybe, though presumably if you hear it it's because you've already paid to watch the film (or some broadcaster has paid for the rights to transmit it on a TV channel you can get). Might also be that the phrase I haven't seen ... yet didn't cause the scriptwriter to raise his/her eyebrows high enough to merit making a change (though Reservoir Dogs did, apparently).
