We use the present perfect simple negative questions to ask about an action that has happened before now but has not been completed yet. The questions are formed with the auxiliary verbs “have” or “has” followed by the negative word “not” and the past participle of the verb.
Here are our simpler yes/no B1 examples:
TLC STUDENT SPEAKING TEST:
(discussing match-fixing in soccer)
Haven’t you heard about the Italians?
male Spain C2
Here’s a longer native-speaker example:
Haven’t we failed as a society when the end result is a child feeling shame?
In the English Grammar Profile, B1 point 18 in the category of PAST is defined as:
present perfect simple negative question
*This point overlaps point 17 b1 negative questions.
*Also, the examples in the EGP only include yes/no questions. There is no entry for added question words, continuous or passive forms, so we believe combinations of these mark examples of B2 or C1 ability:
Why haven’t we solved this problem?
So the question that comes up is,
why hasn’t this been done yet?
He said,
“Why haven’t you been returning my calls?”
*Note “why” is by far the most common question word and that most examples use contracted have/has + not = haven’t hasn’t.
Here for emphasis is an uncontracted C2 example of present perfect simple negative with a rarer question word and an adverb:
Who have we not yet tried to love?
When we do an iWeb search for:
VH _XX * _VVN ?
We notice a great deal of examples of the passive forming ‘been‘:
1 HAVEN’T YOU HEARD? 164
2 HAVEN’T YOU NOTICED? 31
3 HASN’T BEEN SAID? 26
4 HAS NOT BEEN GRANTED? 14
5 HASN’T BEEN ANSWERED? 14
6 HAVEN’T ALREADY SAID? 12 adverb
7 HASN’T BEEN UPDATED? 11
8 HASN’T BEEN FIXED? 10
9 HAS NOT BEEN CONSIDERED? 9
10 HAVE NOT BEEN OUTLINED? 8
A2: already
B1: considered, fixed, noticed, updated
B2: granted, outlined
AI used the vocabulary above to write examples. Note that none of them were contracted which means they are all very advanced:
- Have you not already considered the pros and cons of this decision?
- Has he not fixed the broken window yet?
- Have they not noticed the change in the schedule?
- Has she not updated her resume recently?
- Have you not been granted access to the database?
- Has he not outlined his main arguments in the essay?
- Have they not finished their project already?
We then asked for contractions:
- Haven’t you already considered the pros and cons of this decision?
- Hasn’t he fixed the broken window yet?
- Haven’t they noticed the change in the schedule?
- Hasn’t she updated her resume recently?
- Haven’t you been granted access to the database?
- Hasn’t he outlined his main arguments in the essay?
- Haven’t they finished their project already?