Grammar

Question

What is the purpose of the auxillary verb HAVE in a sentence? Can I just say "I received your e-mail rather than I HAVE received your e-mail? Any help would be appreciated!

GPY · Accepted Answer

"I have received your e-mail" suggests recency and relevance to the present situation. If you are talking about something that happened a long time ago, you would just say "received". It is not wrong to also just use "received" for a recent event, but since in this sentence you will usually be referring to a recent and relevant e-mail, "have received" will usually be appropriate.

CalifJim · Answer

Keith Baltazar 6661 What is the purpose of the auxiliary verb HAVE in a sentence? Can I just say "I received your e-mail rather than I HAVE received your e-mail? Any help would be appreciated!

"have" signals the present perfect tense. Without it you have the simple past.

With "have" we assume you're talking about the time around "now", so you don't mention a time. In your example, it means that you're giving an update on the current status of the communications between you and this other person.

Without "have" we assume you're thinking about a specific time in the past when this happened, and that you may even mention the time. You don't have to mention the time, but you can. I received it at 10 o'clock this morning. I received it yesterday. I received it last week. This might even be in a story about something that happened many years ago.

The choice depends first of all on whether you mention a time. If you do, you can't use auxiliary "have". If you don't, you can use either tense.

If you don't mention a time, the choice depends on how YOU are thinking about the event you're reporting. Do you regard it as a status update of the situation? Use "have". Do you think of it as just reporting an event that happened? Don't use "have".

It takes some practice to make these choices the way a native speaker would make them. And sometimes one speaker chooses the present perfect while another chooses the simple past, because sometimes it isn't really crucial which choice you make. Either one would work in the case of receiving email. Personally, I would probably use the one with "have".

CJ

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