I'm not sure, but I think it is that where a verb itself refers to a past activity, like develop, putting it in the past tense then adding a modifier is a triple whammy, making it ungrammatical.
Doesn't mean they're right. When did that happen? I had 3 classes on this, and they stressed use of present tense for writing regardless of use along with some other guidelines.
He's confusing the simple past verb form and the participle. In the English weak verbs, they look identical, but they are used in different tense/aspect/voice structures.
Simple Past: He developed. He drank water.
Participle: He has developed. He has drunk water.
Claiming that it's ungrammatical in standard English to form a present/past perfect tense/aspect with a helper verb plus the participle...! It's nonsense of the highest order.
With respect to the sister comment, I'd have gone with writing not writings. Also, the sentence "I'm currently in Thailand but I mostly read and write in English for about fourteen years." doesn't strike me as quite right. There a tense switch from present to past without modifying the verb. I'd have probably written 'I've' instead of 'I'.
That said, your written English is excellent and I probably would not have noticed anything if I hadn't been looking for it.
Thanks a lot for the comment. I kind of notice that I overuse past tense a bit too, I'll try to go more with my guts next time. My general lesson: Oftentimes when I try to apply school grammar or logic, I tend to be a bit more off than when I apply the patterns I absorb through experience.
'Writings' is an interesting case. I believe mental lexicon is a lot harder for non-natives to grasp, simply because there are a lot more of them and English does not always treat them consistently. For example, I thought that a collection of written work is plural, while apparently you consider it a collection or an abstract object, and therefore used without an article and cannot in general be in the plural form.
However, this is what I found using Google 'define writing':
2. written work, especially with regard to its style or quality.
* books, stories, articles, or other written works.
plural noun: writings
"he was introduced to the writings of Gertrude Stein"
So, dear native speakers, which is more appropriate in my use in the GP comment? writings or writing? :-)
The past tense of "write" is not "writed". The past tense of "stand" is not "standed".
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