Where's Mike?

Question

At a party.-Where's Mike? Haven't you invited him?-I'm afraid I haven't.Or we should use the past simple here?One moree thing, could someone kindly explain to me what the term "relevance" means acording to the present perfect use?Thank you in advance.

CalifJim · Accepted Answer

Voytaszek-Where's Mike? Haven't you invited him?-I'm afraid I haven't.Or we should use the past simple here?

The past simple makes more sense once you are already at the party. Yes.

— Where's Mike? Didn't you invite him?
— I'm afraid I didn't.
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However, if you are in a group making a list of people to invite, during the group meeting you might ask, "Have you invited Mike? We should put him on the list."

Voytaszekcould someone kindly explain to me what the term "relevance" means according to the present perfect use?

The term is "to have current relevance". The general principle that learners are taught is that if a statement or question "has current relevance", the present perfect is likely to be the correct tense. "current relevance" can be described as 'a significant relationship to the present moment'. Unfortunately, it turns out that every statement or question has to have at least some current relevance; otherwise, nobody would bother to say it. Therefore, the principle of current relevance is not always very helpful to learners of English. It's probably easier to learn how to use the present perfect tense than it is to figure out what 'current relevance' means.

CJ

Where's Mike?

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