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eng789
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Help with grammar. -PLEASE
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Help, Past Simple versus Present Perfect Simple
I�m having a disagreement with my teaching staff. (6 against 1)
I say that this is the correct answer:
1. How long did you live (you/live) there before coming here?
And they say I should also accept:
2. How long have you lived (you/live) there before coming here?
As a native speaker the second option just doesn�t sound right to me.
What do you think? |
6 Feb 2009
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littlecityblue
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I agree with you. The second one sounds clumsy and wrong.
It would have to be How long had you lived there before coming here to make sense.
Even so, I would use your version every time.
Sara
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6 Feb 2009
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donapeter
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My humble opinion:
past action - past tense(simple past here) : How long did you live
or" more"...past 
How long had you lived there before you came here.
D
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6 Feb 2009
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Zora
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Grammatically, neither one is right - but Eng789 is more "correct" than her colleagues which are not right at all...
It should be as littlecityblue pointed out "The past perfect" tense and not the present perfect.
How long had you lived (you/live) there before coming here? - And it is this tense because of the "before" it conditions the tense the sentence is in. i.e. Past Perfect.
IF the "before" wasn�t in the sentence, they�d have been correct.
i.e. How long have you lived (you/live) there?
Linda
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6 Feb 2009
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CyrillicAlphabet
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1. First, I lived there.
2. Next, I came here.
Two events happened in the past one after another. When we put these sentences together to make one sentence, the result sentence follows a pattern according to the following rule:
The first event has to be in Past Perfect, and the second one - in Past Simple, i.e.
I had lived there (for a couple of years) before I came here.
or
I had lived there before coming here.
Best wishes,
Violeta
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6 Feb 2009
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fabianorizzo
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Well.. in these sentences we know that the action is over... "before coming here"... I don�t see this part of the sentence as a verb (in which we would use the past perfect) but as an adverb telling when the action was set. The main verb is "live" and the person is not living there anymore... so in this case we simply use "simple past".
The second sentence would be correct if it was only "How long have you lived there?"
Fabiano |
6 Feb 2009
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GIOVANNI
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I would say �how long did you live there�. The person no longer lives there and is a past action. Now the person lives somewhere else. |
6 Feb 2009
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eng789
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They haven�t studied PAST PERFECT yet, so it isn�t an option.
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6 Feb 2009
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BRAHIM S
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My colleagues have almost said everything
To me the past perfect "had lived" would make more sense than the the simple past "lived" which is also perfectly correct
The present perfect "have lived", however, is totally wrong here |
6 Feb 2009
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eng789
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This was a questions on a test. Do you think I should allow / accept the second answer
because the wording was confusing? They were asked to use Past simple or Present
Perfect only. |
6 Feb 2009
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sarahgriffin
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Yes. "Have lived" implies that you are still living there.
Example: I live in Paris
Oh really? How long have you lived there?
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6 Feb 2009
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