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[denijeur]

Hi friends, I've got a simple question for native speakers of English.

Our teacher has told us that the sentence "This is the first time she's shouting at the children" is gramatically incorrect. The correct one must be "This is the first time she's shouted at the children".

The context is missing completely.

I believe that both Version 1 and

Comments

[itealaich]

#1 is awkward, but I can't for the life of me express why it's syntactically awkward.

[denijeur]

Ok, awkwardness is the main sign of grammatical incorrectness :)

[sollersuk]

UK: I would never use the tense in the first sentence in any context like "This is the first time..."

For example, "This is the first time I am seeing this show" is not right; "This is the first time I have seen this show" is right.

It would be possible to say "She's shouting at the children, and it's the first time", because there it's the verb in a main clause, but in your example it's in a subordinate clause, and the rules for subordinate clauses are different.

[denijeur]

Ok, I see, thanks for your explanation

[pne]

"This is the first time I am seeing this show"

For some reason, this strikes me as what someone from India would say.

(ISTR that Indian English does a few things a bit differently in that respect; I think that "I am not thinking so" instead of "I don't think so" is also possible there, for example.)

[denijeur]

Thanks!

[denijeur]

Thanks!

[readingrissa]

I agree with what everyone else has said - the first one definitely sounds incorrect, although it would be readily understood.

As a side note, I would only use the apostrophe+"s" in the first sentence... It gets a bit iffy for me when used to shorten "has" instead of "is."

"This is the first time (that) she's shouting." ("she IS shouting...")
BUT
"This is the first time (that) she has shouted."

I'm not sure if I'm just being picky, but I always mark it as incorrect when I see "has" shortened in that way. ^^;

[denijeur]

That's curious.

In fast speech would you also pronounce "has" in this case? Would you explicitly say "This is the first time she has shouted"? You'd not shorten it into "she's shouted"?

[neoreulwonhae]

I say "she's shouted" when speaking fast. It's faster and easier than saying "she has shouted".

[readingrissa]

Same here. I'll slur it when I'm speaking quickly, but when I'm WRITING, I would never thinkingly contract it. :)