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It may be too much to start anuvver syntactical fred right after Ullrich's, but at this moment when I can hardly see over the piles of exam scripts lying on my desk, the question arises. Do you see a difference between the following two sentences?

A) "When I finish, I'll return the key."
B) "When I have finished, I'll return the key."

For me, these two are interchangeable, but some of my students claim that in A the person speaking has not yet started the activity, though they'll begin right away, whereas in B they have already started the activity. I think both sentences could be used in either of these two cases, with activity started or not.

What do you think?


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It's the same thang as tsuwm asked about.

Common parlance: interchangeable.

Students: nix. As follows:

One literally says that they'll return the key at the same time that they finish, the other, that they'll return it after they've finished.

Edit: Anyone who says "after they've" begs the question will be shot.


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>It's the same thang as tsuwm asked about.

yep; it's an abject lesson (to me, not to you, Marianna!) in the perils of splitting off from the original thread, for sure.


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Ooops, I'm sorry if this was somehow dealt with in Ullrich's thread... I admit I was confused by much of that thread, not least by its current transmogrification, so I wandered off it...

So thanks for your answers, y'all...


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y'all Marianna, we'll make a Southerner of you yet!


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Marianna, I'm sorry for having further muddled things here -- what I was referring to was the original original thread, which I had imprecisely titled I would have liked an answer.. (and which has long since been subsumed).


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> subsumed

but not subtsuwmed...



formerly known as etaoin...

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