Question
What is the correct usage of verb tenses in the sentence "By the time I arrived, they will have already eaten dinner"?
Answers
Answered by
GPT-4o mini
The sentence "By the time I arrived, they will have already eaten dinner" contains a mismatch in verb tenses. The correct usage should be:
"By the time I arrived, they **had already eaten** dinner."
In this corrected sentence, "had eaten" (past perfect tense) is used to indicate that their eating dinner occurred before the time referred to in the past ("I arrived").
So the correct version aligns the verb tenses appropriately to indicate the sequence of events.
"By the time I arrived, they **had already eaten** dinner."
In this corrected sentence, "had eaten" (past perfect tense) is used to indicate that their eating dinner occurred before the time referred to in the past ("I arrived").
So the correct version aligns the verb tenses appropriately to indicate the sequence of events.