I'm having a discussion with a friend about the use of "I have loved.". He says that you could not use this statement without providing more information. Or at least that it is not used this way. What do you guys think? And also what is the difference between "I have loved" and "I loved"
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I have loved and I loved both sound a little strange without extra information.– Peter ShorCommented Jun 9 at 22:57
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For the difference between present perfect and present simple delete your question and ask it over the ELL.– LambieCommented Jun 9 at 23:12
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1 Answer
It takes a little creativity to imagine actual use, but consider:
I have loved. And I have been loved. Unfortunately, not always at the same time.
I loved. I lost. Do I regret it? Only the loss, not the love.
Usually the verb love is used with an object, but English does not require that you be conventional.
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'... [B]etter to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.' [Tennyson] Commented Jun 10 at 15:28
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The term 'ambitransitive' is often wheeled out for verbs including eat, drink, love, follow, help, knit, read, try, watch, win, know (agentive ambitransitives) with the implication that a covert object is 'around somewhere'. But most verbs can be used either with or without a DO. Some are certainly more common in transitive usages. Commented Jun 10 at 15:41
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I have loved, without an object (as opposed to having lived a life from which such emotions were absent) does not seem to be any more peculiar that I have eaten, without an object, used to indicate that I am not hungry.– jsw29Commented Jun 10 at 16:11
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Except eating is something you do at regular intervals, and from the point of view of hunger it doesn't matter what you eat, so it's good information, like saying "I've already had my dinner" (and so I don't need any food). I wouldn't say the same is true of love - how is "I have loved" useful? You might say "I read" (past tense) or "I watched", but generally the point of saying these it to tell people what you read or watched, by adding an object. "I played" might be justified by context, but "I saw" is even more pointless in most contexts.– Stuart FCommented Jun 10 at 21:18
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@StuartF, just like I have eaten, without an object, requires a context in which it doesn't matter what precisely one has eaten, so I have loved without an object, requires a context in which it doesn't matter whom precisely one has loved. Such contexts do exist: one may be looking back at a period of one's life, which at first appears bland an uneventful, and then point out that in that period one loved, i.e. that one's emotional life was richer than it seemed. In such a context, it doesn't matter whom one loved, and I have loved, without an object, can be a useful formulation.– jsw29Commented Jun 11 at 15:59