grammarmeaning-in-contexttense
I just read a very interesting point in the book Ready for FCE. The question was about the difference between I lived here for two years, and I had been living here for two years. Apparently, when you say the first, it means you don't live here anymore, and when you say the second one, you might be living here or you might not.
I wonder if it's rigorous grammar and in everyday English, speakers use the first statement even if they now live in the same place where they used to.
I see no reason why you should make a point of avoiding interesting for. It's not so common as interesting to, but it's been growing steadily over the past century, from about 1:30 in 1914 to about 1:6 in 2008 (Google Ngrams):
However, there is a possible ambiguity with interesting for. The for participates in two very different constructions. One is the ordinary preposition phrase which indicates who is interested; this is how your examples use it:
This point of view would be interesting for me —that is, I would be interested in this point of view.
The other construction is the FOR ... TO non-finite clause acting as the complement of interesting. (And in fact, historically the first construction appears to have arisen out of this one.)
This point of view would be interesting for me to hear. ... This may be parsed two ways:
Hearing this point of view would interest me.
My hearing this point of view would interest somebody.
In conversation the ambiguity is ordinarily trivial, since we take it for granted that the interested person and the hearer are the same. But what about this?
This point of view would be interesting for President Obama to hear.
Does that mean that hearing this point of view would interest the President, or that I would find it interesting if he heard it?
So you don't need to avoid using interesting for, but you do need to be careful how you use it.
Context, context, context! Either 1 or 3 could be correct.
1 is employed in a context where your discourse concerns the time when she was living in London and mention her move to New York only to provide a 'timeframe' for her London residence; for instance:
She was living in London for several years before she moved to New York, and found British accents (once she was able to understand them) much more attractive than that of her native Minnesota.
3 is employed in a context where your discourse concerns the time when or after she moved to New York and wish to mention her prior residence in London as the source of some state which obtained at that later time; for instance:
She had lived in London for several years before she moved to New York, and found it difficult to understand even midwestern American accents when she returned.
Best Answer
Means you lived there in the past and do not anymore.
You are right that this could indicate you still live there. If you said "I had lived here for two years when my brother came to visit", you are talking about how long you had been there up until a fixed point in time. You may still live there, you may not, context would determine. Obviously, if you were sat inside your house saying "I lived here..." then you clearly still do, but you could use the same word "here" when pointing out somewhere that you used to live.
For reference, this is how you would state how long you have lived where you presently reside.