[Alex80]

Hi everyone, I found some sentences in a textbook about present perfect & present perfect continuous. The textbook uses since, for and how long with action verbs to refer to the present perfect continuous. It uses them only with state verbs to refer to the present perfect simple. But I found some action verbs with "since" to refer to the present perfect simple. Here are two of them:

1.She hasn't eaten there since June.

2.He hasn't spoken to me since Christmas.

Q: Can the verb 'speak' and ' eat' sometimes be stative ? Or Can 'since' come with the action verbs to refer to the present perfect simple?

[SophiaS123]

Good question. Although eat and speak are action verbs, I feel their use in past participle with the sentence denoting stagnation tends to change them to stative verbs. I think the keyword in both the cases here is the negative hasn't. If it wasn't for it, we would have rather seen a regulation use of the tense. Also since the activity began in the past and is going on, the use of for/since is justified.

[susan53]

Sorry but it's just not true that the present perfect simple is confined to state verbs with for/since. It can be used with any verb. here are some more examples.

I've written her three emails since Tuesday, but she hasn't replied.
I've fallen over twice since Sunday.
I've walked the dogs for David for three weeks, since he broke his leg.
I haven't played the piano for twenty years
I haven't weeded my garden since July.
He hasn't cleaned the living room for a month.
I haven't opened my grammar book since I realised the rules were all wrong!

These are all "actions", not states - but notice that they are individual actions, not on-going actions. So eg :

I've played tennis for three years means I started twenty years ago and I've played regularly since then. However, I've been playing tennis for three hours means it was a continuous action which started three hours ago and continued without interruption up to the present moment.

I think this is probably the use that your book is referring to.