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Originally Posted by hela My question was which of the following sentences are correct. |
And your question was answered, Hela.
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Originally Posted by hela I found such a sentence (a) in a textbook:
a) "It is three weeks since he was in touch with me." Is it wrong?? |
It's ungrammatical. 'was' is fine with 'three weeks', but 'is' needs to be in the perfect:
EX: It
has been three weeks
since he was in touch with me.
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Originally Posted by hela b) "It has been three weeks since I last saw you."? (is it possible to add "last"?) |
'last' functions as an adverb. It's fine. Here are the other alternatives:
EX: It's been three weeks since I saw you last.
EX: It's been three weeks since I last saw you.
EX: It's been three weeks since last I saw you.
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Originally Posted by hela (I think "since I saw you" is correct because it expresses the time at which I stopped seeing you, right?) |
Close. You're right about the verb having to be compatible with the time frame. The sentence is fine with 'saw'. The time period it refers to is specific 'three weeks', but change it to 'a long time', a non-specific period of time, and you'll have to change the verb to 'have seen':
EX: It's been
a long time since I'
ve seen you.
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Originally Posted by hela c) "It has been three weeks since I have seen you." Correct?
d) "It was three weeks since I saw you." Wrong, right?
e) "It had been three weeks since I had seen you." Correct? |
Context is important here. Do you have any handy? Grammatically, and this is without context to help me out, I'd say that c), as is, is fine, that d) is awkward, and e) strange. But, then again, I'm working from my own interpretation of how those sentences would fit into a dialogue.
Way too much brain work.
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Originally Posted by hela PS: If my question is still not clear I'll try to rephrase it. |
You're question was very clear. Apparently, our responses were not.