For our Grammar Dopers, are the following sentences grammatically correct?
Do they convey the same meaning? Any online grammar cites would be welcomed. Thanks in advance.
The present perfect form strongly suggests that she still remembers what she learned, while the simple past tense merely tells us that the learning happened at some unspecified point in the past and she may or may not have remember it. So they could mean the same thing, but the first sentence provides more information than the second.
[Edited for sloppy first reading]
Cite: Present Perfect Tense | ENGLISH PAGE (scroll down to topic 2 for your specific example of change over time)
Patty pretty much got it. Both sentences are grammatically correct on their own, but could have a slightly different connotation. Substitute in a different item of acquisition that’s less nebulous, and you make the example clearer.
She received a million dollars after coming to America.
She has received a million dollars since coming to America.
The second implies more duration, and increased likelihood that she still has some or all of it. The first is more definitive and is “more in the past” in tone.
Concur with everything but this:
I would interpret the “received a million dollars after” as being a lump sum and the “has received a million dollars since” as being a cumulative total. FWIW.
Which I think also translates to the “learned” example. The present perfect tense at least provides the possibility that the learning was more of a constant acquisition of knowledge over time (“she has learned how to speak the language”, for example) rather than a more specific acquisition that occurred at a discrete time in the past (“she learned how to say a particular word in the language”).