Does he ever calls you?
Imagine a situation where a friend gives you good advice. The person, you two are talking about, might have called you and you might have expressed surprise at it and for that your friend may caution you saying that the person who never bothered about calling you so far has called you and so there is some ulterior motive or some thing which he could get done only through you and so be wary of him.
This is what Amy said:
She doesn’t talk about relating to Now.
To sum up:
Have you ever been to Africa?
“Ever” is used there to mean “at any time”. The time of “ever” there is unbounded. When used with the present perfect, a boundary, of “before now”, is “imposed” on the unboundedness of “ever”.
OK. Important: Did you read the linked page I posted? Here it is again:
Yes, I did read the link page, but it only confused me more.
Actually, I want to talk about “ever” in different tense, especially in present tense.
Because as you said, if “ever” means “at any time”, we need a certain pedriod of time, not just a
one morment in past nor now. I know many native English speakers use past tense for present perfect.
So it is OK to me that “ever” is used in past tense. But not OK in present tense.
“Ever” goes very well with present/past perfect as it reffes certain point in past upto now.
Also, another reason I am being confused is that, “at any time” could mean “always” but also “any morment, even once”
Two of them are totally different in their meanings.
So your interest in finding a core meaning has waned, has it?
And what are your questions? Can you form questions that express your doubts?
It goes well with many “tenses”:
e.g.
Did you ever go fishing (AmEng.)
Have you ever gone fishing. (AmEng, apparently.)
Have you ever been fishing?
Are you ever going fishing?
Will you ever go fishing?
When could it mean that? Can you give us some examples?
No, I am still interested in finding the core meaning of “ever” but
you said there was not one shared core meaning which can be applied for all sentences.
So I decided to think about “ever” in simple present.
Amy said that “Does he ever call you?” could mean “habit” and it implys his calling is “often or always”
but still “ever” in this sentence hold the meaning “at any time”, which I can assume “at any time” could mean “always”.
Am I right?
So my focus is that in the sentence “Does he ever call you?”, the speaker wants to know
the frequency of his calling or if he called her even once or not at all?
Which fact does the speaker want to know??
You’d have to ask the speaker, or Amy. One note, we should remember that uses of the basic form of the verb - one of which is the present simple - all have one thing in common, i.e. that questions of restriction are not appropriate, i.e. questions such as When? On what occasion? or, Under what circumstances?
What do you think of these?
? Does he ever call you? Even once?
Has he ever called you? Even once?
? He doesn’t ever call me. Not even once.
He hasn’t ever called me. Not even once.