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Seraph42 Posted 6 years ago
Grammar

Which out of the following is correct?

1. he has gone a long while.


2. he has been gone a long while.


I found these examples on another English forums.


Shouldn't it have been "for a long while" ?


Also someone commented that only the second one is correct.


But they didn't explain why the first one was incorrect.


The only difference I see is

in the first example

Gone is a verb

while in the second it's an adjective.

  

Top answer

seraph42 1. he has gone a long while. Ungrammatical.

— AlpheccaStars

  • seraph42 1.
  • he has gone a long while.
  • Ungrammatical.
  • This is fine: He has gone home.
  • (Go is an active verb.
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1 Answers
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seraph421. he has gone a long while.

Ungrammatical.

This is fine:

He has gone home. (Go is an active verb. It refers to the point in time that he departed. An action at one point in time cannot exist over a span of time.)

seraph422. he has been gone a long while.

This is stative. It shows that his stat

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