which is correct?
"I am glad to receive your letter."
or
"I am glad to have received your letter."
The intent is to talk about a specific letter recently received in the past.
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3Also see: How do the tenses and aspects in English correspond temporally to one another?. – Dust_In_The_Wind Sep 02 '14 at 07:31
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Duplicate of a duplicate of a duplicate of a duplicate of a duplicate of a duplicate of a duplicate. This question seems to get asked almost every single day lately. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Sep 02 '14 at 07:38
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@JanusBahsJacquet I'd appreciate a link to one of the originals so I can see some more answers. – semantax Sep 02 '14 at 07:56
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@ManishGiri I understand tenses but my question was about the composite form: "I am adjective to verb phrase". I wasn't sure whether the "to" form was indeed the infinitive, and whether the infinitive could be used with present perfect, etc. So just the tenses explanation in isolation doesn't help with this specific question, but definitely appreciated as an "also see". – semantax Sep 02 '14 at 07:58
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1@semantax 'to' is just a preposition here and one could easily use 'that' instead (albeit it would change the meaning of the sentence slightly), to say, "I am glad that I have received your letter." The tenses explanation still holds! – K - Sep 02 '14 at 08:11
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@K thanks for that clarification (i upvoted you and hope to accept eventually.) – semantax Sep 02 '14 at 08:13
1 Answers
1
Picked up directly from a reference book, one of the rules:
Present Perfect: An action that happened before now.
For your specific conundrum, since you've already received the letter and are thanking the person after the fact, the correct sentence is:
"I am glad to have received your letter."
K -
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