I don't know the director's decision yet.

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Grablevskij

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I don't know the director's decision yet.
I have not known the director's decision yet.

Could you tell me which one is correct or both.
Could you speculate on the subject whether one of these variants is BrE and the other NAme?
 

GoesStation

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Only the present simple in the first sentence is possible in any English variant.
 

jutfrank

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You might be having a first language interference issue here.

The second sentence is not right. You simply cannot use the verb know in that sense in English. I assume that with whatever Russian word you're translating from, you can. In English, know can only ever have a stative meaning. It can never have the sense of coming into a state of knowledge. This is a common learner error.
 

Grablevskij

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I can't understand.
1. Yet is an indirect indicator of a Perfect tense.
2. There is definitely a connection with now. Now I don't know the decision.
3. https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/yet_1?q=yet
Oxford gives two examples:


  • (British English) I haven't received a letter from him yet.
  • (North American English) I didn't receive a letter from him yet.

For me these examples are similar to those in the question: I don't have a letter now. And I don't have a decision.

Well, I'm confused. Could you comment on it?
 

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The problem with your sentence is not the use of the present perfect but the use of the verb know. As I said, you can't use it in this sense.

I haven't heard the director's decision yet. :tick:
I haven't known the director's decision yet. :cross:


See? It's not the grammar that's the problem, but the meaning. You can't say 'know a decision' to mean 'come into a state of awareness of a decision'.
 

Grablevskij

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The problem with your sentence is not the use of the present perfect but the use of the verb know. As I said, you can't use it in this sense.

I haven't heard the director's decision yet. :tick:
I haven't known the director's decision yet. :cross:


See? It's not the grammar that's the problem, but the meaning. You can't say 'know a decision' to mean 'come into a state of awareness of a decision'.

Unfortunately I have never come across such a case in a textbook. Maybe I have been not that attentive. As for progressive tenses, yes have learned that some verbs including know are not action verbs. But what about present perfect? Could you show me this rule a textbook?

As for me, I can show you some examples:

Learning the law. Williams, G. London: Stevens & son, 1982, pp. 97-218. 1911 s-units.
This may seem obvious, but I have known students repeatedly use the phrase' I respectfully submit' before some trite proposition or other, purely out of affectation.

Rings, fields and groups: an introduction to abstract algebra. Allenby, R B J T. Sevenoaks, Kent: Edward Arnold (Pubs) Ltd, 1989, pp. xi-xxvi. 1509 s-units.
I have known students who feel obliged to know pages 1-65 almost by heart before they dare turn to page 66.

The examples are from British National Corpus. I have chosen them because they are somehow academic. In order not to bring substandard language here. But there are some more there: from fiction etc.

Params for the search:
have known + noun
 

emsr2d2

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In your examples above, "I have known XXX to YYY" means "I have experienced this happening". Your use of "know" in post #1 is to do with actual knowledge - information held in your brain. That use of "know" cannot be used in the continuous (progressive).
 

Grablevskij

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What about thiese examples?

Search params: have* * known* that

Managing the national curriculum. ed. Brighouse, Tim and Moon, Bob. Harlow: Longman Group UK Ltd, 1991, pp. 27-129. 1639 s-units.
By definition, many thirteen-year-olds in secondary schools will be achieving at the level of many sixteen-year-olds. In theory, we have always known that.

Living magically: a new vision of reality. Edwards, Gill. London: Judy Piatkus (Pubs) Ltd, 1991, pp. 45-160. 2798 s-units.
Mystics have always known that we create our own reality.

Do these examples correctly illustrate the situation? I understand that in BNC one can find anything. But the first example is by Longman.

And.

Please, have a look here:
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/know_1?q=know

I'd like to draw your attention to the phrase that this word is "not used in the progressive tenses". If it were not used in a perfect tense, they would state that.
So, the question is: does any textbook or a dictionary state that this word is not used in perfect tenses?

Or do these examples illustrate cases 10, 11 (experience) in the article?
But anyway case 1 (have information) doesn't prevent us from using perfect tenses.
 
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jutfrank

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I don't understand what you're asking in post #6. What's the question exactly?

I feel that you haven't understood that the problem with your second sentence is the verb, not the use of the present perfect as such. I'll try explaining one more time what is confusing you:

In your mind, both sentences in the OP have the same meaning. This is not true. The first sentence means what you think it means but the second sentence does not. By using the present perfect, you're trying to use the verb know as an inchoative verb. That means that you think it has the sense of receiving knowledge about the director's decision. The problem is that the verb know cannot ever have that meaning, which is why the sentence is wrong. It can only have the sense of having knowledge. Receiving something and having something are categorically different things.

We're not saying that the verb know cannot be used in perfect tenses (it can) but that it cannot be used as an inchoative verb. It can only be used as a stative verb, as it is in all the examples you've provided where it is in the present perfect tense.
 
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