NRTC English: Future perfect tense

As I’ve always told my students at TBOSE Tutorial, a perfective tense shows completeness; it shows that an action has or had or will have been completed at a time—in the present, past or future.

To understand what a tense is, it is important to know that a tense shows the relationship between an action and the time the action happens, is happening, had happened, will be happening, had happened or even was happening as the case may be. These different cases give us the different forms of tenses that we have in English.

The two obligatory elements in a tense, therefore, are the verb that indicates an action or state of being, and the time (indicated by the use of adverb, adverbial phrase or adverbial clause) in a sentence.

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In every perfect tense (present perfect tense, past perfect tense and future perfect tense), has, have, and had are ALWAYS used. HAS and HAVE are used for present perfect tense and HAD is used for past perfect tense. A future perfect tense uses WILL/SHALL HAVE with a past participle in its own characteristic manner.

Future perfect tense

The future perfect tense refers to an action or state that will finish sometime in the future before some other event in the future.

Let’s bear the structure of the future perfect tense in mind: subject + will/shall have + past participle of a main verb + an adverb or adverbial phrase that indicates the time. Note, however, that the adverb or adverbial or even adverbial clause can come before the subject.

Let’s look at some examples:

1. I will have cleaned my room before my parents come home.
2. When the sun rises, we will have left.
3. I will have built the shed by Saturday.
4. Ideally, Chris will have cooked the turkey before his sister arrives.
5. By the time winter comes, we will have stocked up on enough food.

In all the examples above, we can see that they show that at a time in the future, the action will/shall have finished. This is how the future perfect tense works. In the same vein, you may have noticed that before my parent come home is an adverbial clause of time which shows the time the action will have been completed.

In examples 2, 4, and 5, too, there is an adverbial clause used to indicate the time. In this case, I mean, in a future perfect tense, the adverbial clause must be rendered in a simple present tense (as we have in When the sun rises, before my parents come home, and other examples). This is how the agreement works in a future perfect tense.