recently and lately

English grammar questions, answered by Alan

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hanuman_2000
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recently and lately

Post by hanuman_2000 »

Hello,

1. I have not seen her lately.

2. I have not met her recently.

Both the sentences are in the present perfect with time adverbial 'lately and 'recently'

Does both adverbial include the present time?

These are also used with the simple past like

3. I saw her recently.

We know that the simple past tense used for completed event in the past at some definite time.

What is the difference between the usage of 'recently' in the simple past and in the present perfect tense?
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Alan
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Re: recently and lately

Post by Alan »

A good question!

While most time adverbs modify either the past simple or the present perfect, 'recently' can modify either.
Thus we can say both

There was an accident recently.

and

There have been many accidents recently.

but, as will probably be clear from these examples, the former tends to refer to single events, and the latter to repeated ones.
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