GIVE ANSWERS - English

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Is it ”Where DID you buy this watch” or ”Where HAVE you bought this watch”? Why?

GIVE ANSWERS

Vsevuskav profile picture VsevuskavJanuary 2021

The correct version is Where did you buy this watch?

 

Let's start with the indicative past tense: You bought this watch or You have bought this watch.  Either of these is correct, but the first one is more common.  The second one would be used for a recent action, or to emphasise that the watch has changed: once it was unbought, and now it is bought.

 

If we want to turn these sentences into questions, first we have to change You bought this watch into You did buy this watch.  (In this context, did emphasises that the action is unquestionable.)  Then we invert the sentences, so that they become the questions Did you buy this watch? and Have you bought this watch?  They are both acceptable, and the distinction I mentioned earlier still applies.

 

When we introduce the question word where, both Did you buy this watch? and Have you bought this watch? should become Where did you buy this watch?.  (Where have you bought this watch? implies that you bought the watch in multiple places, (eg you bought it on the Black Market, then again in China, and then you went to the Moon and bought it there too) or that the watch is considered bought in some places but remains unbought in others, which doesn't really make sense.)  Unless I'm forgetting something, this rule applies most of the time:

 

I gave you your freedom or I have given you your freedom Where did I give you your freedom?

(In this case, Where have I given you your freedom? would imply that I gave you freedom on multiple occasions, or that you have freedom in some places but not in others.)

 

You ate the pear or You have eaten the pear Where did you eat the pear?

(Here, Where have you eaten the pear? implies that you ate the pear in multiple places, or that the pear is eaten in some places, (eg on the top or on the outside,) but remains uneaten in others.)

 

However, that is not always the case.  If the verb implies change of location, you do not need to change have to did:

 

He has gone [somewhere] → Where has he gone?

 

We've put them on the table → Where've you put them?

 

Bowman has entered the monolith → Has Bowman entered the monolith?

 

At least, I think that's how it goes.  I've never thought about it before.  Thankyou for a very interesting question!

  • AussieInBg profile picture AussieInBgFebruary 2021
    It’s great that you are explaining your answers using examples. Just giving a short answer without any defining information is a largely worthless exercise from a learning viewpoint.

    In your answer to this thread, you were perhaps using some terminology many English learners would not have been not familiar with. For example, most learners would not explicitly know what an ”indicative tense” was. Apart from ”I/you/he/she/we/they were”, subjunctive verbs in English have identical written forms to the indicative ones, unlike languages such as French or German. So, subjunctive verses indicative usually doesn’t get explicitly discussed in most English courses. It, of course, is implicitly described when teaching conditional forms and so on.

    Still, you’ve been generally doing better at explanations than many people teaching professionally

    One of the very first things I’d recommend is becoming highly conscious of the differences between Australian, British and American English. Apart from several countries such as Singapore and Malaysia plus a few other hotspots, the predominant dialect being used and taught is not Australian English but British or American. A huge amount of confusion among students comes about due to a lack of knowledge and understanding, even implicit, about the differences between different English dialects. That’s where many of the questions students have originate from - including mo
    st likely the question asked in this thread. It’s not just about spelling ”colour” as ”color”

    Students get highly confused when, for example, a teacher for a previous course gives something that is correct in British English then at the next level someone with a background from another dialect background emphatically tells these students that they are wrong. Similarly, they learn something in American English then listen to someone from a British English background using grammar in a totally different manner. Overall, confusion sets in as to whether their teachers/instructors can be actually trusted - or for that matter their own learning capabilities - and this really affects the learning process.

    4 stars probably roughly corresponds to about B2 on average on this site (but I’ve seen 5 stars next to people with barely B1 English and people at a level approaching C2 showing only 3 stars). B2 is a good communicative level of English but is not superstardom and less than likely to win next year’s Nobel Prize for Literature. In short, I would hesitate to quickly judge a person’s level on what they self-assess on their profile - unless of course you have seen quite a lot of their productive language.

    Coming out of high school, you might well have a better functional and theoretical understanding of grammar and register than many who have a university degree with a major in an English-language field and are teaching English as a second language. In certain regions of the English-speaking world, grammar which is taken for granted as part of learning at an Australian primary school makes its first appearance in a lecture during tertiary education. As for differentiating formal and informal language usage, what might have been seen as pretty much a standard part of an Australian high school education often as not makes its first appearence towards the end of a university degree.

    Unfortunately, many English learners are exposed to teachers from such educational backgrouds who are unable, unwilling or simply too lazy to make up for the glaring deficits in their learning - or the non-native speakers teaching them were taught by such natives. The end result is language learners being churned out by teachers/instructors who neither properly understand grammar nor when or how to use specific vocabulary and in general are unable to comfortably, correctly and appropriately produce language on a formal/informal spectrum. This often as not reflects itself in the mistakes that ”advanced” language learners make.

    Further on, this even extends into some really deadful text books and other educational resources which are supposed to be ”fun” and all the other usual cliches - but are completely incoherent rubbish and just about worthless from a language learning perspective. Students learn from these materials.

    So, it’s probably a good idea to be aware that not all learners have been properly taught along the way, of how much theoretical grammar knowledge students have been exposed to and that many under or overestimate their language capabilities.
  • Vsevuskav profile picture VsevuskavJanuary 2021
    AussieInBg:

    Yes, I was well aware of your first point. The examples and explanations I gave assume neutral intonation, with stress on the lexical verb.

    I hadn’t thought much about your second point. I merely figured that, since iamannaiam claims to have excellent English, it would be good to help her fine-tune her understanding of the language; so I offered what I had. All the same, what do you recommend I do to avoid confusing learners?
  • AussieInBg profile picture AussieInBgJanuary 2021



    The question was a standard one about the difference between simple past and present perfect tense forms.Capitalisation of the auxiliary verbs ”did” and ”have” in the poster’s question was almost certainly just to emphasise the different verb tenses rather than creating questions of an emphatic form with a stress on the auxiliary verb.

    Language learners get massively confused about simple past verses present perfect because usage frequency changes between different dialects of English - you end up with different ”rule” sets for teaching these verb tenses depending on which English dialect is being emphasised or the English speaking background of the one doing the teaching/instruction.
AussieInBg profile picture AussieInBgJanuary 2021
Both are correct for different reasons.

”Where did you buy this watch?” - the emphasis is on establishing the fact about the place where the watch was purchased. The questioner is interested in the fact of the place of purchase of the watch and probably wants to leave the conversation about the watch at that point.

”Where have you bought this watch”? - using present perfect for the question form gives the emphasis on a completed past event for which the answer is important for the present point in time to the questioner. For example, the questioner might be trying to lead into a discussion about price and other attributes of the watch.

The first one is more common in American English, or for that matter Australian English. The second is more commonly used in British English.

I suspect that an important reason for this is cultural - an emphasis on factual information verses trying to broaden the scope of a conversation.
Samaneh4 profile picture Samaneh4April 2021
The correct one is ” Where did you buy this watch ” because it is related to the past, the action of buying is finished, and you are not continuing it, so you use the simple past tense instead of present perfect.
  • AussieInBg profile picture AussieInBgApril 2021
    You can still use the present perfect simple tense for completed actions in the past which are relevant to the present point in time.