TDOL,
You wrote:
Quote:
Ex: *They worked here for the past five years.
Do they still work here? Yes, so the past is innapropriate.
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:D My reply: Please understand I agree with you 100%.
But how should we say it? You are implying that even with specific past time, sometimes, using Simple Past is inappropriate. However, this goes against the normal rule as I quoted above:
How shall we explain the whole thing? Below, I try to give my supposition, or conclusion, that is deduced from all the opinions here.
:agrue: I have been seeking for help for a long time and I was told that we may easily find examples that violate the agreement. We may search in the pattern "have seen yesterday", and we will get many examples violating our quotations before:
That is to say, using the pattern "have seen yesterday", replace SEEN with other past verbs like
discussed, arrived/ finished/ shown/ told/ got/ received/ agreed/ found/ lost/ decided/ etc., or replace YESTERDAY with
last year/ month/ week/ etc., we still easily find a number of examples --
"Present Perfect with YESTERDAY". What does this finding prove?
If we add things all up, we may find something consistent, though. We may prove the rule that Present Perfect doesn't stay with specific past time, is just not there. Grammar writers provide us a non-existent rule that in turn forces themselves to hide away the Past Family.
It is "circular vice", or a vice circle, no pun intended. If this is not the conclusion, then what is?
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More evidence is that Cas wrote:
Quote:
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That’s why *"I have lived in Japan in the past week" is ungrammatical.
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If according to Cas, Present Perfect is ungrammatical staying with "in the past week", why then it is grammatical with "in the past two weeks"?
:P But if Present Perfect is ungrammatical with "in the past two weeks", why then it is grammatical with "in the past 1000 weeks"? And then, why it is grammatical with "in the past five years"? They are of the same pattern!!!
That is, from the beginning to the present, logically, Cas regarded that Present Perfect is not compatible with "in the past five weeks".
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More evidence is that a gentleman here regarded our rules are nothing but a viewpoint:
Quote:
You CANNOT use the Present Perfect with time expressions such as "yesterday," "one year ago," "last week," "when I was a chlid," "when I lived in Japan," "at that moment," "that day" or "one day."
== http://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/presentperfect.html (a viewpoint, doesn't make it a rule.) |
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Of course, as we see from above, your statement is also a disagreement to the rule.
The temporary conclusion here is obvious: Nobody agrees to such a rule.
What do you say?
:) :)
Ex: But we have seen yesterday, that Judah and Ephraim are to be taken as the same; 
Dear TDOL, if it is really as you said, we were just mentioning the beginning of the finished 1987, which is possible, and we brought the time up to the present by 'since', which is unlikely. In your because, 'since' doesn't bring us up to the present, as it is not "since us". 
I revisited the search of "specific past time present perfect" in yahoo, and I found just how common the rule is.
From The Linguistics Department of Stanford University: 
As we now must agree, this common rule doesn't really work. It only works by hiding the Past Family. Think of our days of discussion that can rectify so many erroneous statements from around the world!! We should be proud of ourselves here. 
My reply: It is inexcusable for me not to have discussed about the prepositions used in the pattern of the Past Family.
IN is dynamic, meaning sometimes there, and sometimes not there.
But in past discussions (in other forums) we agreed that they are so only when the pattern is without the adjective 'past'. 
Linear Mode
