Quote:
Originally Posted by Wuisi  Hi,
Who disturbs my slumber!!! T'was us, Wuisi. You woke up with a start.
It's a pity you stopped it there...but, don't worry, here's Michael Swan (entry 419, page 422-3, sections 3, 4 and 5 -fourteenth impression 2002, there is a new edition, though); hope it makes you re-take your discussion. If you -native speakers- fail to reach an agreement and draw some kind of conclusion I think I'll take to drinking...  The conclusion, the factual one, is this. English native speakers do, on limited occasions, for special purposes, override the strong tendency to avoid the use of past time adverbs with the present perfect.
Thanks for adding the Swan material.
I hope you find it useful and come as close as possible to some sort of compromise so that we 'learners' find some ground to hold on to when telling our teachers why we find the mark given unfair. Please do go on 
P.S.- My textbook includes time expressions such as 'over the last few years'
when illustrating the use of the present perfect, which leads to a lot of controversy as for the interpretation of the years included and teachers make us remember the difference between 'last week' and 'the last week', which in turn sparks off the production of sentences such as 'I haven't seen Peter the last week', which we are told to be unacceptable. You won't believe what classes are like nor the teacher's frame of mind at the end of them...
Best regards. |
I'm not familiar with this distinction between 'last week' and 'the last week' when it's used with the present perfect. I think that,
"I haven't seen Peter for a week"
would be more common, althought,
"I haven't seen Peter the last week" would certainly be understandable.
Why would it be unacceptable?