By Present perfect, Grammar

Susan, I understand the frustration you are feeling. Your language, Chinese, is what linguists call an "isolating language". All information, such as the time an action occurred, is conveyed by the choice and order of words in a sentence. There are no verb tenses. There are no plurals. In fact,...

Prospective Past vs Retrospective Past The Past Family are Prospective past. It is the opposite of time adverb "Ago", a retrospective past. I want to put IN THE PAST DAY and A DAY AGO in contrast. In the diagram below I hope you can see the right and left limits of YESTERDAY. ____the day...

THE EMBARRASSMENT OF DEFINITE PAST TIME ADVERBIALS (DPTA) Most grammar books will remind you of the 'Golden Rule': Present Perfect doesn't stay with past time expressions, such as "yesterday, in 1993, last week," etc. However, as they know by heart they are hiding away many past time...

I have long noticed a kind of tense-changing process: telling the time frame of an action will have to change its tense. If on one-sentence basis, the stand-alone meanings of Simple Past, Present Perfect, and Simple Present are no more than the following four simple rules: (a) Simple Present...

THE Past Family In explaining tenses, most grammar writers have to hide away the family of past time adverbial "in the past xx years", which I call the Past Family, (such as "in the past, in the past year, in the past two months, during the past three decades, over the past four weeks, for the...

If you wish to ask if it started in the past and it is still happening today, the present perfect seems to be the right choice: "Have women have been treated differently from men throughout history?" is just an example. Or "Have women and men often/as a rule been treated differently?" I've read...

Hi, I'm getting worried I am posting too much, but as you sound desperate, I will try to answer. I think the easiest way is to take some practical examples. Suppose I tell you: "I HAVE BEEN reading." It tells you about the past (what I was doing up until now, i.e. "reading"). It tells you...

Hi mfung, i feel a good teacher of english grammar will be able to give u the correct reason. the sentence is incorrect because, i think, after 'has', 'had', 'have' etc u cannot use 'health'. i feel others in this forum will be able to help us.

Can anybody enlighten me as to the fact that in the passive voice iit s possible in present perfect continuous. For example "The spy was been being watched by the KGB. I belive not but I have heard that in the bowels of smoewhere it exists. Is it true? Is it correct grammar. Thanking you.

You're right to be confused. The grammar book is wrong. You can, for example say "I've been in China for five days, thirteen hours, forty minutes, and twelve seconds." Is that specific enough? To give the book some credit, although specificity isn't the issue, time is. The present perfect...