I have or I had

Question

Which is correct? Or what's the difference? I have sent you an email earlier. or  I had sent you an email earlier. Thanks.

Mister Micawber · Accepted Answer

0Standing alone as they do, both are incorrect; it should read 'I sent you an email earlier'.  a simple past, completed event set clearly in time ('earlier') before the speaker's present.l 0-

CalifJim · Answer

0 I agree that the first one is incorrect. 02br
00The second, on the other hand, seems quite possible to me. 02br
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00Why didn't you tell me that the boss was out of the office today when we met at 10 this morning? 02br
00I thought you already knew. (After all,) I had sent you an e-mail (about it) earlier. Maybe you didn't receive it. 02br
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00CJ 0-

Mister Micawber · Answer

0Just to clarify-- I agree that the second could be correct, but it does require more context such as Jim has suggested. That's why I said that 'standing alone' they were incorrect. 02br
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00If I received an email that read simply 'I had sent you an email earlier', it would be bad grammar. 0-

Guest · Answer

0 Thanks. 02br
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00So the sentence: "I have received your email last week." is also incorrect? 02br
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00It should be just: "I received your emai last weekl." ? 02br
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00Thanks again. 0-

CalifJim · Answer

0 Yes. It is incorrect to say, "I have received your e-mail last week." The objection is that you have a perfect tense ('have received') together with a mention of a specific time in the past ('last week'). 02br
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00CJ 0-

CalifJim · Answer

0 Mr. Micawber, 02br
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00I agree that standing alone there is something anomalous about "I had sent you an e-mail earlier". Broad brushing the term "bad grammar", I think we might even say bad grammar. I'm not sure I would characterize the anomaly as bad grammar, however, at least not in a narrower sense of "bad grammar". It seems syntactically (grammatically) correct, even semantically correct, although here I may be on shakier ground. Certainly, though, if it appears in isolation, the sentence is somehow, shall we say "pragmatically incorrect". 02br
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00Do you think the 'bad grammar' problem is more one of semantics or pragmatics? (I always get these two confused!) Any thoughts? 02br
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00Jim 0-

Klavier · Answer

0 My one and a half cents: 02br
00I think 'good grammar' has to do with 'perfect' and clear meaning, something that is understood in all the aspects of the sentence by two or more people, when I say: The ball is red, every native speaker will get the meaning, in some way it's 'perfect'. From here we can go down and have sentences less and less clear, here is when the expression 'bad grammar' seems to have more sense, at least from my point of view; in the sentence: she didn't like him because he was rich (from an earlier post) we're not breaking any rule of grammar but we have a not so clear meaning. And finally I can say this: 02br
00"My father. He is an old man. He didn't buy any food. And my mother won't cook anything. He went to the store, with a lot of money. And didn't buy rice. But today I got up late and I'm not hungry." 02br
00Am I breaking any rule? No. Is the meaning clear?. Not so clear. Do we have here 'bad grammar? Not again. So, what do we have? I don't know. 050010id9

CalifJim · Answer

0 I normally consider "grammar" and "syntax" as synonymous. Not everyone shares my view on this. Therefore semantic clarity, in my view, has nothing to do with grammar. The famous Chomskian "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" is nonsense semantically, but is perfect with regard to grammar! Separating semantics from grammar is not easy and is often not worth the trouble, however. 02br
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00Other lapses of language may involve pragmatic considerations. 02br
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00Example: After a person has left the room, shouting after him, "You may now leave the room!" is perfect as to grammar and meaning (syntax and semantics), but not as to pragmatics: It makes no sense in the actual situation. 02br
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00CJ 0-

Roro · Answer

0 Hello, please let me put in a word here! You all have presented own standpoint clearly, and I feel like getting my ideas in order, too. As I said earlier I'm not a linguist yet, so I myself want to know my standpoint. These terms (i.e. grammar, semantics, syntax, pragmatics, correctness/incorrectness etc. etc.) are superficially easily understandable... sometimes to the extent that they work not so effectively as linguistic terms. 02br
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00(1) * I have sent you an email earlier/last week. [incorrect : 01b00semantic02b00 batting between present perfect and the word 00] 02br
00(2) I have sent you an email today. [correct : here's no semantic batting] 02br
00(3) I had sent you an email earlier/last week. [correct : here's no semantic batting between past perfect and the word 00. But we need some context. Standing alone, 01b00pragmatically02b00 inappropriate (or incorrect).] 02br
00(4) My father. He is an old man. He didn't buy any food. And my mother won't cook anything. He went to the store, with a lot of money. And didn't buy rice. But today I got up late and I'm not hungry. [ I don't know the term to describe this .... inconsistency of a discourse? and it should be treated in pragmatics, of course.] 02br
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00I'd like to differenciate grammar from pragmatics, and divide grammar into roughly three section: morphology (including phonology. this is idiosyncratic matter to individual languages: inflection, declension, conjugation etc.), syntax, semantics. 02br
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00As CalifJim mentioned slightly there's no semantic section in Genetative Grammar ( ... there 01i00was02i00 some powerful school, Generative Semantics, though, in opposition to it...). So ... if there's such a system, in which every expression is composed according to the syntactic and the corresponding semantic rules, then ... maybe it will give us some knowledge about language. (There's some attempt to treat a semantic anomaly of such a sentence as "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously", but I'd prefer to not analyse this sentence.) 02br
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00Sorry, I started writing to talk about this correspondence between syntax and semantics, but I need some more time, I'd like to stop writing here.... To be continued. 0-

Roro · Answer

0 Good morning grammarians. I have a feeling that I'm writing what you all are well aware of already, but, let me continue. Before talking about the correspondence between syntax and semantics (in Montague Grammar), I have to mention the difference between 00 and 00. 02br
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00P. Grice proposed the following 00 in conversation: 02br
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00[1] 01b00Maxim of quantity02b00: Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purpose of the exchange). Do not make your contribution more informative than is required. 02br
00[2] 01b00Maxim of quality02b00: Do not say what you believe to be false. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence. 02br
00[3] 01b00Maxim of relevance02b00: Be relevant. 02br
00[4] 01b00Maxim of mammer02b00: Avoid obscurity of expression. Avoid ambiguity. 02br
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00Latin and CJ give these good examples in the above: 02br
01blockquote

00"My father. He is an old man. He didn't buy any food. And my mother won't cook anything. He went to the store, with a lot of money. And didn't buy rice. But today I got up late and I'm not hungry." 12br
10Am I breaking any rule? No. Is the meaning clear?. Not so clear. Do we have here 'bad grammar? Not again. So, what do we have? I don't know. 15012blockquote

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01blockquote

00 After a person has left the room, shouting after him, "You may now leave the room!" is perfect as to grammar and meaning (syntax and semantics), but not as to pragmatics: It makes no sense in the actual situation. 12blockquote

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00You are breaking the Grices cooperative principles in conversation here ! 05102br
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00And I insist on separating these kind of 00 from 00. Semantics .... for me it's logical meaning, so to speak. 02br
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010id111id1

I have or I had

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