In English tenses, the time adjunct "in the past few/ten/four years" is very useful, and always combined with the present perfect tense, as in:
Ex: There have been great improvements in school teaching in the past ten years.
Ex: As a result, the number of multiple births in the U.S. has more than quadrupled in the past quarter-century.
Ex: At least in the past few years exitways from central Paris have been greatly improved.
Ex: This function has greatly increased in importance over the past hundred years.But this GROUP of time adjuncts is not reported in most of the grammar books as they explain the tenses. I wonder why? In my opinion, the adjunct is so common that we should not even neglect or turn a blind eye to.
Truly, however, I have never seen a grammar explaining this common adjunct in relation of tenses. Please let me know if you find one.
Thanks
Shun Tang
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Related message:
From a reader:
You ask some interesting questions. I think some grammar books do link these time adjuncts with the perfect tense, but it's only as a vocabulary builder. I don't know which ones, but it seems that I taught out of a book that did some time in the past. Interesting site you have!
Shun replied:
Thank you for visiting my site.
As for your suggestion that "I think some grammar books do link these time adjuncts with the perfect tense, but .......I don't know which ones.....", it is not a good way enough to reply anything. However, you give me hope. Please look for these precious books and see if there are really some adjuncts of this kind. Would you kindly tell me the result? Thanks in advance.