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Doing some grammar exercises I faced the following grammatically correct options. I want to understand the difference in meaning

I haven't been back to London since I've lived in Italy

I haven't eaten really good pasta since I lived in Italy_

and the last one which is grammatically correct, but like the book says "tells that it's difficult to find good pasta in Italy, which is not true"

I haven't eaten really good pasta since I've lived in Italy

What is the semantic difference between the first two sentences? Does the first one suggest that the teller still lives in Italy whereas the second suggests that the teller doesn't live in Italy anymore?

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  • “Since I have” means “because I have”: I haven’t been back to London because I have lived in Italy - whatever that means. while “since I lived” means “subsequent to when I lived”: I haven’t eaten really good pasta after the time I lived in Italy. It says you can’t find good pasta outside of Italy.
    – Jim
    Feb 13 '17 at 22:37
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    The questioner is right; Jim's interpretation of 'since' as meaning 'because' is not relevant here. Sentence 1 implies that I am currently resident in Italy. Sentence 2 implies that I lived in Italy at some time in the past.
    – Kate Bunting
    Feb 14 '17 at 9:49
  • Thanks Kate. At least Jim's interpretation seemed to be quite interesting to me because I'm not a native speaker
    – xenn_33
    Feb 14 '17 at 10:31
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All of your interpretations are correct, although the 1st sentence could be the same if you no longer live in Italy and you still haven't been back to London. If you ever get confused, you could split the sentence in 2 at the word since and move the back half to the front to try and help with interpretation.

For example:

Since I've lived in Italy, I haven't been back to London.

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