[Grammar] Past Simple Vs. Present Perfect

[saloom2]

Hello everyone,

I played tennis.
I have played tennis.

No time expression, so it's PS or PP?

 

[Tdol]

It's impossible to say without more context. Both could occur without a time phrase- the wider context would give the answer. Thinking about decontextualised sentences will not lead to any great understanding- all real language occurs in a context. Time is one key to distinguishing these verb forms, so removing the time does nothing except make things unclear.

 

[emsr2d2]

Just because there is no time expression in the sentence containing the information, doesn't mean there isn't some kind of time frame somewhere.

What did you do yesterday?
I played tennis.

What did you do last Wednesday?
I played tennis.

What have you done this week?
I have played tennis.