Teacher Discussion Forums

Does this sentence work, IYO?

They should be waiting for us when we've got there.

Yes. Why shouldn't it?

lolwhites wrote:Yes. Why shouldn't it?

It sounds odd to me. What makes it different, semantically, from "when we arrive"?

What makes is different, semantically, to "when we arrive"

To me they mean essentially the same thing. What do you make of You can go out and play when you've had your dinner? Does that sound strange?

lolwhites wrote:

What makes is different, semantically, to "when we arrive"

To me they mean essentially the same thing. What do you make of You can go out and play when you've had your dinner? Does that sound strange?

Yours doesn't sound strange, but Metal's does.

What do you make of You can go out and play when you've had your dinner? Does that sound strange?

Not at all. Neither does this "They'll be waiting for us when we've arrived, dumped our bags, and had a quick shower.", but the thread sentence sounds odd to me.

"When I get there we'll have supper" vs "When I've got there we'll have supper"

Doesn't the second sound like there can be a breathing space, however brief, between the two actions? Which maybe makes that already-in-process "waiting" in

They should be waiting for us when we've got there.

the thing that jars.

Or does it make it sound like getting there is in itself a drawn out process with an end to it, which is odd...... unless it's true? :

Going through immigration and security will take a while. But when we've got there (arrivals) they should be waiting for us.

Doesn't the second sound like there can be a breathing space, however brief, between the two actions? Which maybe makes that already-in-process "waiting" in

Yes, normally the perfect form would express a gap in such sentences, but the verb arrive doesn't seem to allow it if not followed by a sequence of connected actions, as shown in the extended sentence I posted. I dunno, maybe it's just me. I see "arrive" as a punctual, and not extended, action in such sentences. The waiting is the background (longer action) to the arrival, IMO.

Timeline.

They should be waiting for us when we arrive.

• a) They are waiting.
  b) We arrive.

They should be waiting for us when we've arrived.

• a) We arrive
  b) They start waiting.

The second is obviously a bizarre order of events.

Are you sure? Wouldn't that second one be:

They should wait for us when we've arrived. ?

Or am I slow this morning?

Stephen Jones wrote:
They should be waiting for us when we've arrived.

• a) We arrive
  b) They start waiting.

The second is obviously a bizarre order of events.

How about here?

"They should be waiting for us when we've eaten." Couldn't the waiting have started before our completion of dinner?

JuanTwoThree wrote:Are you sure? Wouldn't that second one be:

They should wait for us when we've arrived. ?

Or am I slow this morning?

I get exactly the same reading as Stevie.

Hmmm. I think Stephen is right - the "problem" here isn't the present perfect as such, but a sematic mismatch between the two parts.

They should be waiting for us appears to describe an ongoing situation that begins before the arrival (hence the continuous aspect) - sematically it's the same as I expect them to be waiting for us

The perfect aspect in when we have arrived implies that once this action is completed, something else can happen. But the waiting has already begun...

The two don't appear to go together very well, though I'd desribe the construction as clumsy rather than totally wrong. Hats off to JTT for giving a context where it might make sense.

lolwhites wrote: They should be waiting for us appears to describe an ongoing situation that begins before the arrival (hence the continuous aspect) - sematically it's the same as I expect them to be waiting for us

I agree. Of course, we don't know whether that "should" is obligation or not, but it's all the same anyway.

The perfect aspect in when we have arrived implies that once this action is completed, something else can happen. But the waiting has already begun...

Yes, but it's not the same in "they'll be waiting for us in the pub when we've arrived, dumped our bags and had a quick shower". There, we don't know if the waiting will begin before or even during or after those events. Why? Because it takes time to go down to the pub, and that action is implied, but not explicit in the sentence. With the original sentence, there's no logical time gap between arriving and a next event. So "when we've arrived", alone, sounds odd, even though the speaker could be using shorthand for "arrived, dumped bags, showered". If the speaker considers "we've arrived" to include the above events, then I guess the sentence is OK, but I'd say too much is left to implication in that case.

It all sounds strange and unnatural to me. I don't think I could even imagine a scenario for this. It's like trying to fit a circle peg in a square hole. Or maybe this is British use of perfect that Americans have shunned? Could the future perfect, though rarely used, be missing here? I would rephrase them thus:
They should (already) be waiting for us by the time we get there.
Or
They should (already) have been waiting for us by the time we get there.
Or with future perfect:
They will have been waiting for us by the time we get there.