In most cases, I’d see these as synonymous. But I would technically see the second one as putting more emphasis on the fact that the person continues to play football.
I do not see it as meaning that the person has not stopped playing for two years. “I am playing football” doesn’t necessarily mean you are playing it right that second. It can be an announcement that you have decided you will play in the near future. Thus “I have been playing football” can mean that you have played games n the past and will again soon.
It does to me - but not because of the “have”. I think “for a total of three years” is what makes it sound more natural , even if it was “I’ve taught second grade for a total of three years”
I would personally be inclined to drop the “have” and use the simple past tense but it does depend on the nuance of what you want to emphasize.
I asked our resident genius, ChatGPT, about this and I pasted its response below. I would be inclined to agree with @MrAtoz that the “have” creates an impression that you may still be teaching as described; alternatively, the present perfect tense with “have” is most appropriate when the action is either still ongoing or it has some relevance to the present, and the time frame of the action isn’t particularly relevant. Whereas the simple past tense is especially appropriate if the time frame is specified and relevant, as in “I taught second grade for a total of three years back in the 80s when this school first opened.”
Quoth ChatGPT:
The difference between “I have taught second grade for a total of three years” and “I taught second grade for a total of three years” is the use of the present perfect tense versus the simple past tense.
The present perfect tense “have taught” is used to describe an action that started in the past and is still ongoing or has relevance in the present. It is often used when the time frame of the action is not specified or is not important. In this case, “have taught” implies that the person is still teaching or has recently stopped teaching second grade.
On the other hand, the simple past tense “taught” is used to describe a completed action in the past. It is often used when the time frame of the action is specified or important. In this case, “taught” implies that the person taught second grade in the past but may not be currently teaching second grade.
Both forms are grammatically correct, and which one to use depends on the context and the emphasis the speaker wants to convey. If the speaker wants to emphasize the ongoing nature of their teaching experience, they could use the present perfect tense. If the emphasis is on the completed action of teaching second grade for a total of three years, the simple past tense could be used.
Yes, I misread what he wrote as “present perfect”. As you say, “present perfect progressive” is the name of the tense I was thinking of.
To me, it does imply that you are actually playing it right now. For the future use, I would obligatorily add a future construction such as “in 2 days” or “next week”.
As for the difference between “I have taught second grade for a total of three years” and “I taught second grade for a total of three years”, I would unamiguiously read the second sentence as “I don’t teach second grade anymore”, whereas the first one implies, or at the very least leaves the possibility open, that “I still teach second grade”. The distinction is very clear in my opinion.
That’s where we differ. I would never construe it that way, and I believe that most people here disagreeing with you are doing so for the same reason.
“I’ve been playing football for 2 years.” means to me that the person started the activity two years ago and has engaged in it sporadically until the present. Not this very moment, but as part of normal present life. Such expressions can be, in fact are, widely applied in standard speech. “I’ve been sexually active for two years.” almost certainly does not imply that you are engaging in sex while speaking. Nor does it imply that you have been sexually active for every moment of those two years, any more than you were playing football continually for the past two years.
This is a question of usage rather than grammar. Grammar can be applied to it only after the fact. The progressive tense is for a sporadic activity that is continual. (Note: I maintain that continuous and continual have lost the formal difference between “nonstop” and “come and go”, but since we’re being pedantic I’m foregoing that pleasure. Worse, I am putting the quotation mark inside the punctuation. Heresy, I know.)
I have been a member of the Dope for over twenty years and have been engaged in many language threads for twenty years. That’s an anodyne sentence. What does it connote? My membership is continuous in that it has never been interrupted and that I remain a member every minute including now while I am typing these words. However, my engagement in language threads is continual because I also engage in other types of threads but will post in language threads that look interesting.
Thanks fo your remarks. I agree that it probably boils down to usage.
However, I noticed that 3 of the sentences you gave as examples are in the present perfect simple, not the present perfect continuous
While I’d tend to be cautious with the first 2 examples as the use to verb “to be” which often a special case, I find it telling that you didn’t use and have been engaging in many language threads for twenty years. Again, the latter sounds like a non-stop activity to me.
I’m more comfortable with usage than with the fine points of grammar, especially because authorities appear to overlap meanings and throw a dart at a board for tense names.
Assuming that the present perfect simple is just the present perfect as opposed to the present perfect continuous (progressive), Grammerly says:
How to use the present perfect continuous tense
You can also combine the present perfect tense with the present continuous tense to show an ongoing action that started in the past and continues to the present. This hybrid tense is called the present perfect continuous tense. The construction is similar to using the present perfect tense in the passive voice, except that the main verb uses the present participle instead of the past participle.
[have /has ] + [been ] + [present participle]
Shehas been seeinga physical therapist since her surgery.
Ithas been rainingall day.
That’s a perfect (sorry) example of having it both ways: the action is continuous and not happening at the moment and the action is continual and happening at the moment.
You say po-tay-to and I say po-tah-to. Let’s call the whole thing off.
I agree. The two sentences are different, but the difference is so slight that one could substitute for the other in many contexts.
I would use the first when emphasizing my current status as a person with football experience. “How’d you get so good?” “Well, I’ve played football for 2 years.”
The second, I think, emphasizes the ongoing or repeated engagement in football activity. “Why have you had so many concussions?” “Well, I’ve been playing football for 2 years.”
With reference to “I’ve been playing football for 2 years”: Your interpretation ignores an important attribute of natural language which is that because it’s spoken by humans, some of its semantics derive from common-sense interpretations of context. “It has been raining for two hours” implies a continuous action continuing non-stop to the present. The statement about football clearly means only that the speaker is a football player and has been engaging in the sport frequently.
If every expression always had to be interpreted literally regardless of context, our language would be so degraded that it would be hard to communicate at all. Even the sentence about rain would have a slightly different meaning if the statement was “it has been raining for a week”, where it would be reasonable to infer that the speaker means it was a rainy week but not necessarily that the rain had never stopped at all over such a long period. We infer this from our mental model of the world wherein we understand how weather generally works. We similarly apply reasonable context-based interpretations to statements like “it’s raining cats and dogs”.
It’s a well-known fact that certain verbs “select” certain tenses, or the other way around depending on your views of the syntax–semantics interface.
It’s rained for a week = it has rained, on and off, for a week.
It’s been raining for a week = it hasn’t stopped raining at all for a week.
The semantics of the verb “to rain” allow both tenses to work.
I’ve played football for 2 years. = I’ve played regularly, but not all the time, for 2 years.
! I’ve been playing football for 2 years. = I’ve played non-stop for 2 years.
The latter is nonsensical because, while the syntax is fine, the semantics disallow it.
Now, I know perfectly well that usage allows people to say this, and we re-interpret what they say based on our knowledge of how the world works, as you say. Since the syntax is fine, we strive to find a meaning in a nonsensical sentence.
It still remains the the use of progressive form implies non-stop activity. That’s basically what these tenses are for.
You’re just repeating the dogmatic assertion that you made the first time as if it was an incontrovertible truth. It isn’t, as was extensively discussed throughout this thread. You’ve offered no evidence for this dogma except what the second version “sounds like” to you. I would particularly draw your attention to the quote I posted from ChatGPT in post #23. While ChatGPT is far from infallible, in this case it’s spot-on, and in agreement with the views expressed upthread by some of our more knowledgeable posters.
You are mistaken on not just one count but on two. First, this is one of many, many examples of the English language simply not possessing the kind of unconditional context-free precision that you seem to want to ascribe to it. One could say, without even getting into the analytics of parsing, that if a large majority of native English speakers routinely use the second version of that sentence, then that construction is de facto standard English, regardless of what it “sounds like” to you.
Your second mistake is asserting (again, rather dogmatically) that the first construction is the “correct” way to express the idea that one has been playing football for two years and is presumably still playing. As already discussed, it could mean that, sure. But it could also refer to a past activity that is no longer occurring. Indeed, @Left_Hand_of_Dorkness used it in exactly that sense in the quote below, and if you want to start arguing language usage with LHoD, well have at it and good luck!
In short, there is general agreement that the second version is the preferred way to express what has been called the present perfect progressive tense, simply because the first version is ambiguous.
If you are somehow inexplicably convinced that the preferred version is “nonsensical” because of what it “sounds like” to you, I’m not likely to convince you otherwise, although if it’s so obvious to you I’m not sure why you posted a poll on it.
“I have been playing” is progressive, so it emphasizes the fact that you have been and still are in the process of doing just that. “I have played” is okay, but it can also be used to say that it is something you did for a period of 2 years but are not necessarily still doing it now. Example: “You play football? Oh, I have played football, too.” Personally, I would use the progressive, but it’s no big.
The reason I posted a poll was to see how people here felt about this distinction.
I may have worded it dogmatically, but really in the end it’s my usage - something that you seem to really care about - that prompted the question. I make a very clear distinction between these two tenses. In some cases, using one instead of the other is nonsensical to me.
I’ve heard many people use these tenses in a way that didn’t make sense to me, and I was interested in seeing how widespread that usage was.
Again, I’m perfectly aware of that, and I adapt my understanding to circumstances. I cannot help being puzzled when I hear something that initally doesn’t make sense to me. Sorry.
Sure.
I’d just like to point out that some real humans seem to agree with me that the use of the progressive form in some context is weird. Just in case you’ve missed it :
Well, I would consider those objections misguided. Continuous tense does not indicate a non-stop action. It simply refers to an action that has started in the past and continues through the present, whether literally continually or on-and-off. In my dialect the present perfect continuous would be preferable in the example in the OP.
In many cases, the present perfect simple and present perfect continuous are interchangeable. I have no idea why some would think a sentence like “I’ve been playing football for two years” would mean “I started two years ago and have been playing non-stop since then.” No native English speaker would think that, and that’s, in my experience, the usual way of phrasing things. I would ask someone “how long have you been playing football” 9 times out of 10 over “how long have you played football.”
Well, now you have your answer. Among the mostly well-read and educated native English speakers here, 94% believe that the two sentences either mean slightly different things or exactly the same thing. Of the majority that believe they mean slightly different things, the distinction expressed upthread is that the first one is ambiguous. Exactly 0% at this point, out of 96 voters, share your belief that the second sentence “doesn’t make sense”.
Look, this isn’t complicated. When you have two different constructions that can mean the same thing, and one of them is ambiguous while the other one is indisputably clear in conveying the intended meaning, the one with the clear meaning is preferable.