linguoboy wrote:You could use either. If you use the perfect, it focuses on the resulting state of fly-free quiet.
Well this is what especially hard to grasp. I mean, they both seemingly mean the same (at least I expect my speaker's reaction to be the same in both cases). What I'm trying to say is that the information which will stuck in his head is "the fly is swatted, that's why it's become quiet here". But sometimes they are absolutely not interchangeable. I think I've understood most of the cases but sometimes it can be problematic. (Differentiating resulting statements from factual statements. I suppose that every statement is factual as it bears information and every information is considered as a fact).
linguoboy wrote:I'm not sure how that's strange. An iterative process is ongoing. It just consists of distinct steps (iter literally means "journey") rather than a continuous uninterrupted action.
Well I didn't know that. It's interesting we can consider discrete value as continuous. So it seems that some uses of tenses in English can be explained even by the means of math and one can see logical explanation.
linguoboy wrote:Your example runs into problems because to be seeing someone is an idiom meaning "to be in a casual romantic relationship with someone". If I say "I'm seeing someone from the office", it means I'm dating them. If I want to make clear that they're just appearing before me repeatedly I'd say "I keep seeing someone from the office".
Can the last example also mean "to be dating"?
Like:
"We were seeing each other for a month or two".
"Then what happened? Did you break?"
"Yep, we kept seeing each other for another month and then we'd completely separated".
I also want to ask one question. On an English topic one guy posted this photo and asked whether the word "driving" is used correctly here or not. He suggested that "driving" means that a reader drives the train himself. He said that it's better to say "During movement" instead. So a lot of people agreed that "driving" is absolutely incorrect in the context. So what do you think? Does it only mean "to drive the train as a driver"? I myself think that a better option is "While on train". Do you think it's possible?