[Grammar] I have washed my T-shirt. It is clean now.

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Son Ho

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Mar 22, 2016
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I have four sentences and I think sentence 1,2 and 4 are correct. Sentence 3 is considered wrong because we usually use the present perfect continuous with verbs that suggest extended activity. Moreover, we can see its result in this sentence. We can't use the present perfect, can we?


  1. I have washed my T-shirt.
  2. I have washed my T-shirt. Now I can go out.
  3. I have washed my T-shirt. It is clean now.
  4. I have been washing my T-shirt. It is clean now.
 
Sentence 4, not sentence 3, is in the present perfect continuous. I don't think it is wrong. It is appropriate in the right context.

Jack (visitor) : What have you been doing, John?
John : I have been washing my T-shirt. It is clean now.
 
For native speakers it is more common to use simple past. (See below.)

Jack: I washed my T-shirt. We can go out now.
Mack: OK!

The present perfect isn't wrong. It's just that we haven't read those "rules" and don't know them.
:-D
 
For native speakers it is more common to use simple past.
For native speakers of AmE perhaps. We speakers of BrE would be perfectly happy with the present perfect.
 
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we haven't read those "rules" and don't know them.

Modern 'rules' of grammar are based on observation of how we actually speak and write. Native speakers don't learn rules about the uses of tenses and aspects. We use them naturally. (Some of us may make mistakes in the forms, e,g, I done it for I did it, I've seed him for I've seen him' but rarely about the tenses/aspects themselves.)
 
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Sentence 3 is considered wrong because we usually use the present perfect continuous with verbs that suggest extended activity.

Usually doesn't make for an absolute rule. How would #4 sound if your T-shirt had been particularly dirty and stained and you had spent half an hour washing it by hand?
 
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