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Present perfect or present perfect continuous? Hi,everyone.Can you help me find any indicator or time word that make us chose one tense over the other?(Taken from a textbook) 1.Look! Somebody(drop)their wallet on the pavement. 2.John looks tired.I don't think he(sleep)very well recently. According to the text,the answers are: 1.has dropped 2.has been sleeping Can I say in 1,it's pps because of the verb"Look!" or the verb"drop" tends to be shorter here ? and in 2, ppc because of "recently",but it comes with both.It's really confusing. |
Re: Present perfect or present perfect continuous? 1. Could be dropped or has dropped. It depends on speaker perception. Has dropped is probably more likely because it expresses a past event with a present result (the wallet is there now), but if the speaker wants to see it just as a completed past event, s/he'll choose dropped. 2. has been sleeping is most likely. It combines the perfect (past event with present result ...so he's always really tired during the day) and the progressive (= an on-going action - every night for the past few weeks). But again - it depends on speaker perception. If they just want to focus on the past event/present result they might say hasn't slept, or if they just want to focus on the on-going action might say isn't sleeping very well. That would be more likely without recently, but is a possibility. As always, grammar is meaning. The different forms express different meanings and the speaker will choose the form which expresses the meaning s/he wants to convey - which will always depend on how s/he perceives the event. |
Re: Present perfect or present perfect continuous? Good answer. |
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