As far as the この="this" goes, I know exactly where you guys are coming from, but I personally have experienced times when "kono" could be said as "the".
For example, to show you a phrase I was all to familiar with in high school-
"Did you even
read the book yet?"-- the teachers would often be holding "the" book in their hands.
Or a simpler (and lighter) version of that : "did you read the book yet?"
Although I don't think I'd find myself using この in that situation, I could see how one could.
As far as dropping the "already" or "yet" from it, I too think that it would make it technically innacurate... but I feel like there could be times during interpreting in which it would be appropriate to drop a "yet/already" to get rid of what could be sensed as some kind of negative nuance. I for one don't think my kind of thinking here has any place whilst taking a test though.
MMM-- I can appreciate those nuances a lot. I think I have a similar feeling about "have you" implying like a higher sense of attachment from the "asker" here. Personally I don't see why "have you" would be superior than "did you" as far as "correctness" goes. Is there any reason why you feel that? I agree with the notion that this is all about context. Even still though, I can't think of many situations that would require one or the other. It could be my over exposure to Japanese English, but I somehow have the feeling that "have you" falls under the "polite" category where as "did you" would be more neutral.
And Kyle-- the scary thing about this is that it might not be the teacher I talked to. According to them, on the entrance exam (or one of the standardized tests) "did you" is incorrect while "have you" is correct. Supposedly they have ALTs checking those kinds of things... regardless of that, it boggles my mind where and how they decide to split hairs over grammar here and where they simply don't give an S. It's like they treat the language like math (x=y) where it really shouldn't be and then they are liberal in areas where it really is a "this or that" type of situation. It's very frustrating to deal with.
I appreciate you guys taking the time to give me a little bit of my English-language confidence back
. I fear for the day when all my native intuition is replaced with this terrible make-believe English that I am confronted with every day of my life.