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Jerry Chen
Joined: 26 Jan 2006
Posts: 115
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 Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2007 5:37 am Post subject: Need help from native speakers of English (grammar question) |
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Hello,
Please help me with the following sentences.
1. By the time he arrives, I will have finished it.
By the time he arrives, I will finish it.
Do they mean the same thing? ( Are they both grammatical?)
2. By the time he arrived, I had finished it.
By the time he arrived, I finished it.
Do they mean the same thing? ( Are they both grammatical?)
Thanks for your explanation!!! |
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myprofe
Joined: 29 Jun 2004
Posts: 425
Location: Madrid, Spain - Native Boston, USA
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| Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2007 11:49 am Post subject: Re: Need help from native speakers of English (grammar quest |
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| Jerry Chen wrote: |
| 1. By the time he arrives, I will have finished it. - By the time he arrives, I will finish it. |
Both sentences are saying basically the same thing - Sometime between now and when he arrives I will finish - but from a different perspective. If our perspective is the present looking toward the future then the second sentence is correct. However, if our perspective is looking back from the future then the first sentence is correct. The perfect tense refers to the result or the consequence of the action more than to the action itself.
| He then wrote: |
| By the time he arrived, I had finished it. - By the time he arrived, I finished it. |
In this case the two sentences are saying that - at some time before he arrived I finished. The past perfect is often used to demonstrate that one past action happened before another past action. The simple past is used to list a number of past events occurring in cronological order.
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