AMERICAN ENGLISH_ TENSE_ REPEATED ACTIONS

Hi, le12345—I am a native speaker of American English, and I can tell you that I strongly prefer the sentence with the present perfect in each of your examples.  If you use the past simple, you should "anchor" it with a past-time adverbial.

Thanks David.

I also asked this question on a renowned English site. As I learned from my book, I also think that the present perfect should be used in theses sentences.

But let take a look at a US native speaker 's answer named Lambie. She says that either tense can be used, depending on what we want to say. It seems that, according to her, the simple past also sounds natural in these sentences. This makes me confused.

https://english.stackexchange....he-us-for-repeated-a

So, Until now, I don't know how to choose a good tense to use in these sentences. The opinion seems different between US natives.

In the future, please avoid putting this forum in dialogue with other forums. I am not communicating with Lambie, nor do I intend to join the "renowned English site" to do so. That said, Lambie's comments are not opposed to mine.

I do not disagree with Lambie about both sentences being correct. However, unless the context alone implies a specific past time, independent of the sentence, I disagree with her that the sentence itself implies a specific past time.

What I maintained, and continue to maintain, to be flawed about the examples with the simple past—that they should be anchored with a past-time adverbial—is intimately related to the fact that the context implies no specific past time.

@David, Moderator posted:

In the future, please avoid putting this forum in dialogue with other forums.

Thank you for your help.

I am sorry for doing this. I didn't know this is not allowed in our site. I won't do something like this in the future.

@David, Moderator posted:

If you use the past simple, you should "anchor" it with a past-time adverbial.

I know that American speakers tend to prefer the simple past over the present perfect when there is no past-time adverbial.

For example: These sentences 1) and 2) below include no past-time adverbial, but as I know, American speakers prefer the simple past. Does it because they are single actions, so natives prefer simple past here?:

I would like to inform someone a piece of news:

1) I prepared/ have prepared breakfast, remember to had breakfast before going to school.

2) I bought/ have bought a new car. Would you like to try driving it?

All my sentences in my first post talk about repeated actions until now. Because it is highly likely to happen again in the future, so present perfect is preferred. Am I right?

Could you please tell me the reason you use the present perfect in all the sentences in my first post?

@le12345 posted:

I know that American speakers tend to prefer the simple past over the present perfect when there is no past-time adverbial.

While it may be true that British speakers use the present perfect more often than American speakers, or that they tend to favor the present perfect when both the present perfect and the past simple are possible and correct, I would NOT say that it is true that "American speakers tend to prefer the simple past over the present perfect when there is no past-time adverbial." On what are you basing that claim?

If you are basing your claim on what you've heard a few people say in response to questions you have asked, they may be forgetting that speakers often ASSUME a recency reading of the simple past based on the situational context in which an utterance is made. But if there are no situational grounds to make such an assumption, American speakers will find the past-time-adverbial-free sentence with the simple past just as unnatural as British speakers.

@le12345 posted:

For example: These sentences 1) and 2) below include no past-time adverbial, but as I know, American speakers prefer the simple past. Does it because Is it because they are single actions, so natives prefer simple past here?:

I would like to inform someone a piece of news:

1) I prepared/ have prepared breakfast, remember to had breakfast before going to school.

2) I bought/ have bought a new car. Would you like to try driving it?

Example (1) is ungrammatical as you have written it. It is a run-on sentence, and you have used "to had." (After infinitival "to," you must always use the base form of the verb, which is "have" here.) That said, both the present perfect and the simple past are possible in the clause about preparing breakfast. The reason the simple past is fine there as an alternative to the present perfect is that it is situationally clear that the speaker has in mind a time in the recent past. The same may be said about example (2).

@le12345 posted:

All my sentences in my first post talk about repeated actions until now. Because it is highly likely to happen again in the future, so present perfect is preferred. Am I right?

Could you please tell me the reason you use the present perfect in all the sentences in my first post?

The reason why both British and American speakers don't use the simple past when a past time is not understood is that the past simple is disorienting when it is not anchored, explicitly or implicitly, to a past time.

Thank you for your detailed answer and the correction of my mistake,David.

@David, Moderator posted:

The reason why both British and American speakers don't use the simple past when a past time is not understood is that the past simple is disorienting when it is not anchored, explicitly or implicitly, to a past time.

I get what you mean here.

@le12345 posted:

2) I bought/ have bought a new car. Would you like to try driving it?

@David, Moderator posted:

The reason the simple past is fine there as an alternative to the present perfect is that it is situationally clear that the speaker has in mind a time in the recent past. The same may be said about example (2).

Let's take 2nd sentence for example, as you said, the speaker knows and has a time in his mind when the action of buying a new car happened (for example : last week) , but he doesn't want to say it out loud or include that time in his sentence. The time is only in his mind.

Similarly, let's take one of the examples in my first post to analyze:

I visited/ have visited Paris two times. It is a beautiful city. I think you should visit it once in your life.

If the speaker still remembers and has two times in his mind when the action of visiting happened ( 1st visit were in 2010, 2nd visit were in 2014), but he doesn't want to say it out loud or include that time in his sentence. The times are only in his mind. Do you think that the simple past is still acceptable here for this reason? But it is not usual, because in this kind of context, the specific time normally is not important, so the present perfect is more preferred.

How do you think about my opinion? Does it sound right?

@le12345 posted:

Let's take 2nd sentence for example, as you said, the speaker knows and has a time in his mind when the action of buying a new car happened (for example : last week) , but he doesn't want to say it out loud or include that time in his sentence. The time is only in his mind.

The time is not in his mind only. Pragmatic factors are involved. You might benefit from reading Paul Grice on the rules of conversation if this type of thing is not intuitively obvious to you.

It would be extremely abnormal and unnatural for a speaker to say something like "I bought a new car" if he or she did not mean for the speaker to infer that the car-buying event happened in the recent past. No adverbial is needed.

@le12345 posted:

Similarly, let's take one of the examples in my first post to analyze:

I visited/ have visited Paris two times. It is a beautiful city. I think you should visit it once in your life.

If the speaker still remembers and has two times in his mind when the action of visiting happened ( 1st visit were in 2010, 2nd visit were in 2014), but he doesn't want to say it out loud or include that time in his sentence. The times are only in his mind. Do you think that the simple past is still acceptable here for this reason? But it is not usual, because in this kind of context, the specific time normally is not important, so the present perfect is more preferred.

In that case, the present perfect is much better than the simple past. With the simple past, it is important for the speaker to mention when his or her two Paris visits occurred. The listener can't infer anything about the times.

You have fixated on my use of the phrase "has in mind." I did not mean that the important thing is a socially inaccessible temporal representation in the mind of the speaker. I meant that the approximate time should be inferable.

Hi David, thank you for having been with me so far and helping me on this matter which has cased me a lot headache.

@David, Moderator posted:

It would be extremely abnormal and unnatural for a speaker to say something like "I bought a new car" if he or she did not mean for the speaker to infer that the car-buying event happened in the recent past. No adverbial is needed.

The context of buying a new car:

The  context itself tells us that both the speaker and the listener know that at some point in the recent  past ( it doesn't have to be a specific one such as "yesterday" or "last week"..) the action of buying happened, then we can use the simple past here.

@David, Moderator posted:

In that case, the present perfect is much better than the simple past. With the simple past, it is important for the speaker to mention when his or her two Paris visits occurred. The listener can't infer anything about the times.

I meant that the approximate time should be inferable.

The context of visiting Pairs:
Even the speaker still remembers the time of the 2 visits, but with this context, the listener can't infer at which points in the past the two actions of visiting happened, so the present perfect is good to use here.

Do I understand what you meant correctly?

If so, I have come to a conclusion, in a sentence without any time adverbial/time reference, if we want to use the simple past, then the context itself has to make the listener infer about the approximate time when the actions happened.