The other day I put to here an interesting phenomenon: you will for certain find the adjunct "in the past few/four/ten years" in readings, but you cannot find it in grammar books. Now we U-turn to another as spectacular amazement: you can find the following adjunct in most of grammar books, but you will not find it in readings, say, in the coming issue of Time magazine. It is the invisible "up to now".
See an example from a grammar book about this adjunct: This tense [the present perfect tense] is usual with "already: I have already explained that.", with the Adverbs of Frequency: "He has often/never/always done that.", and with the words: now, today, this week/month/year, etc., up to now, up to the present, so far, not yet, lately."
In the above example, I have put many brackets on as some original formats cannot be shown on Internet. On the other hand, if you have difficulty to locate "up to now" in your grammar books, please let me know.
The reason why we rarely see "up to now" in readings is that writers use its synonym "still" instead. Please look up your dictionary if they are synonyms. It is quite all right that, in writing, we choose between synonymous words from time to time. But the trouble is, "still" is combined with the present tense as in "He still prefers to stay in hotel", or "He is still working in the yard", etc. Then the choice between "still" and "up to now" is difficult, and more probably there is no choice at all.
Every time when a writer uses "still" he breaks grammarians' heart. What then is your choice: "up to now" with the present perfect tense, or "still" with the simple present tense? I still prefer the latter.
If you are able to find one single appearance of "up to now" in any recent issue of the Time magazine, please tell me quick and I will get the first example outside grammar books after I have searched for it so many years. Thank you.
Issue to be discussed (if and only if we have the above situations): Why do grammars put away some common adjuncts and show us an adjunct so rarely used, in relation of the present perfect tense? Is it just a matter of carelessness?
On the other hand, if these adjuncts are proven to be vital to their tense theory, and grammarians play hide-and-seek with students, in order to keep their theory going, don't you think they are close to cheating? Or are they just naughty?
Shun Tang
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