I have bought a car.

[IvanV]

Also got is redundant. The sentence is better without it.

Disputable.

[Searching for language]

I think there is another instance in which the have is important.

If you look at two friends discussing the prices of cars, the conversation could be like this:

"I am amazed at the prices of cars today, have you bought one recently?"

Answer, "As a matter of fact, I have (bold is emphasized) bought a car recently, but I have had an accident today.................. "

The have is strictly for emphasis.

[IvanV]

I think there is another instance in which the have is important.

If you look at two friends discussing the prices of cars, the conversation could be like this:

"I am amazed at the prices of cars today, have you bought one recently?"

Answer, "As a matter of fact, I have (bold is emphasized) bought a car recently, but I have had an accident today.................. "

The have is strictly for emphasis.

You could freely omit the highlighted part. It'd be a wee bit more emphasised — to my ear, at least.

[Offroad]

I have bought a car recently but I had an accident today and it is wrecked now.

I have bought a car recently but I have had an accident today and it is wrecked now.

Why is the second sentence fine? I don't think it is, I think the particle "today" suggests the present perfect is not the best choice.

[philo2009]

It might be worth noting just for the record that it is perfectly possible for a present perfect to refer to a situation no longer extant at the time of speaking, but it depends very much on the nature of what follows. In, for instance,

I have bought several good cars from him in the past.

there is no implication that the speaker still owns any of them.

In the sentence originally cited

I have bought a car.

, however, the singular indefinite NP and the absence of any kind of adverbial that would indicate otherwise (such as 'before', 'in the past') combine to make the implication of current ownership (almost) certain.

[pjsnelling]

I have bought a car recently but I have had an accident today and it is wrecked now.

I bought a car recently but I have had an accident today and it is wrecked now.

I have bought a car recently but I had an accident today and it is wrecked now.

Which would be your choice?

I bought a car recently, but I had an accident today, and it is now wrecked.

Saying it was wrecked is redundant. It would be better to say "it was totaled" or how much damage was done. To say it was wrecked after it was in an accident is unnecessary unless you are giving more information. Also the commas are necessary because you have independent clauses joined by cooridinating conjunctions. I would reword this sentence myself.

[bhaisahab]

I bought a car recently, but I had an accident today, and it is now wrecked.

Saying it was wrecked is redundant. It would be better to say "it was totaled" or how much damage was done. To say it was wrecked after it was in an accident is unnecessary unless you are giving more information. Also the commas are necessary because you have independent clauses joined by cooridinating conjunctions. I would reword this sentence myself.

Yes but in BrE we say 'wrecked' and in AmE you say 'totalled' to mean the same thing.

[bhaisahab]

I bought a car recently but I have had an accident today and it is wrecked now.

This is the only one of the three which is OK.

[bhaisahab]

Originally Posted by Searching for language
Also got is redundant. The sentence is better without it.

Disputable.

Not at all disputable, 'got' is as redundant as it is possible to be.

[philo2009]

1)


Are all the below sentences possible and correct?

I have bought a car recently but I had an accident yesterday and it is wrecked now.

I have bought a car recently but I had an accident today and it is wrecked now.

I have bought a car recently but I had an accident today morning and it is wrecked now.

I have bought a car recently but I have had an accident today and it is wrecked now.

Thanks

Regarding this point, only #3 is ungrammatical (this morning, not *today morning).

The others are all structurally possible but to a greater or lesser degree unnatural. In fact the present perfect is not really needed here at all. Natural (incl. BrE) usage here would be

I bought a car recently but I had an accident today and it is wrecked now.

Main pointers:

1. The present perfect + 'recently' tends to be restricted to conditions/states extending over a period, e.g.

I have been busy recently.

rather than, as here, for an event confined to a discrete, if unspecified, time and place (the purchase of a car). Of course there's nothing inherently wrong with saying

I've bought a car recently.

but the natural context for such a statement would be as one item on a list of actions recently undertaken being presented rather as interesting experiences than as things that happened in the past, e.g.

A: So, what have you done recently?
B: Well, I've climbed a mountain, I've wrestled a gorilla, and - oh, yes, I've bought a car.
A: Well, what an exciting life you lead!

2. 'Today' can qualify simple past verb forms just as well as present perfect, and, perhaps contrary to expectations, shows no natural preference for the latter over the former. Again, the only issue is whether the action is presented as an (interesting) experience* or as a simple past event. Thus to say, for instance,

I've won a prize today!

would be extremely natural (at least for BrE speakers), whereas to announce

I've had an accident today!

might - depending on a range of other factors - sound rather strange, as if having an accident were something to be pleased about!

(* particularly one relating in some way to the present moment)