- I've been seeing him posting stuff on his blog
- I saw he's been posting stuff on his blog
Which one sounds more natural? Do they mean the same thing to you? If they both are ungrammatical, how would you express this thought?
grammar
- I've been seeing him posting stuff on his blog
- I saw he's been posting stuff on his blog
Which one sounds more natural? Do they mean the same thing to you? If they both are ungrammatical, how would you express this thought?
Best Answer
Your first sentence is:
The word see has many possible meanings: among these are
When see is followed by a thing, the only valid meaning is observe.
When see is followed by a person, two of these meanings are valid- observe and meet with.
When see is followed by a that-clause, the meaning be/become aware of are is valid.
If you are watching somebody, you can say "I see him", but people do not usually say "I am seeing him", because the use of a continuous tense of "see" implies the "meet with" meaning. So, you can say
If you want to use a continuous tense meaning observing, you have to use "watch":
This means that you were sitting next to him for a while, and he was posting stuff on his blog.
Moving on to your second sentence:
If you observed him, you can't say "I saw he." you have to say "I saw him", because what you saw must be the object. For example,
When you say "I saw he...", it's really a that-clause where the that has been omitted. The omission is normal: you can tell that it's happened because the pronoun is a subject-pronoun. The complete sentence is therefore:
With a that-clause, the appropriate meaning is to "be/become aware of". The first part of the sentence therefore means that, at some time in the past, you became aware that he had been posting stuff on his blog. It's perfect simple- a completed action- so you aren't aware of posts since you last looked: the posting (as far as you are aware) finished before you became aware of it. you therefore should use past perfect continuous:
If you are aware now that he is still posting on his blog, you should use the present simple:
If you have been keeping an eye on his blog for a while and are still doing so, you can use present perfect simple for "see":