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Norwolf Posted 16 years ago
Grammar

Are/were/have been coming

Here again.

----We’ve spent too much money recently.

----Well, it isn’t surprising. Our friends and relatives _______ around all the time.

A are coming B had come C were coming D have been coming

In my opinion, A is the best, but D and C do work there.

To my surprise, the given answer is D.

Kindly share your views with me.

Thank you very much.
  

Top answer

norwolf Kindly share your views with me. I picked D immediately. I was instinctively matching tenses with the opening remark: -- We 've spent ...

— CalifJim

  • norwolf Kindly share your views with me.
  • I picked D immediately.
  • I was instinctively matching tenses with the opening remark: -- We 've spent ...
  • -- ...
  • and relatives have been coming around ...
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6 Answers
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norwolfKindly share your views with me.
I picked D immediately. I was instinctively matching tenses with the opening remark:

-- We've spent ...
-- ... and relatives have been coming around ...

CJ
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A is present so the friends and relatives haven't visited yet so why would they have spent the money. B is a finished action the came and left.

C were coming - they were coming no they are not coming.

D have been coming shows that this happened regularly.
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CalifJimI picked D immediately. I was instinctively matching tenses with the opening remark:-- We've spent ...-- ... and relatives have been coming around ...CJ

Oh, yes, Jim. I once completely agreed with you until I searched in the corpuses, where I found there were rare examples showing that have-been-doings followed all the time.
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norwolfare the other two grammatical?
They are all grammatical, but they are not all appropriate in the given context. Only D is appropriate.

CJ
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CalifJim
norwolfare the other two grammatical?
They are all grammatical, but they are not all appropriate in the given context. Only D is appropriate.CJ

Thank you, Jim.
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Hi, guys

Doesn't the adverbial of time 'all the time' allow for more than one verb tense to be used?

For instance, 'tomorrow' allows this sentence to talk about the future, even though we are using the present tense:

I am picking you tomorrow.

Thank you
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