In English grammar, several parts and elements help us form a complete and meaningful sentence. And we all know that tenses are one of the most important parts. They help communicate and represent actions with reference to the time when they occur.
Mainly, we know three tenses: past tense, present tense, and future tense. But these tenses further take different aspects that talk about time in unique forms. In this post, we will learn one such part that belongs to the future tense, the future perfect tense. In a general sense, the future perfect tense denotes an action that will happen and complete itself before some point in the future.
While they are a little different, they are not much of a trouble. Understanding the points given below will surely make it easy.
What is future perfect tense?
By definition, we can say that the future perfect tense talks about actions that will have been finished at a particular point in the future. Here, we talk about the past in the future.
Simply put, the future perfect tense is an aspect of the future tense that denotes an action that will be completed at some point in the future. This means the action will be finished between a time period from now to some point in the future.
Form
The form of the future perfect tense is quite straightforward and easy.
It has mainly two basic rules. The first is the addition of two auxiliary verbs, will and have. Or we can also say the simple future form of the verb to have, will have. This phrase remains constant whenever we refer to an action that will be finished in the future.
After that, the main verb follows. Here, the main verb is taken in its past participle form. That means regular verbs will be added with –d or –ed, and irregular verbs will have their own unique forms.
So, the structure will begin with a subject, the auxiliary verbs, and finally, the main verb. Let us look at some examples.
- Sarah will have completed her course before you come back.
- He will have cooked the food before you arrive.
Likewise, we can also form question sentences and negative sentences with this tense.
For negative sentences, we will simply insert not between the two auxiliary verbs, will and have.
For example;
- They will not have completed the preparation before the function.
- She will not have arrived before sunset.
And for a question sentence, we have to exchange the first auxiliary verb, will, with the respective subjects. Rest remains the same. For example;
- Will she have eaten already when we reach?
Uses
After learning the form and definition, let us quickly understand when this tense is commonly used.
- The basic use of future perfect tense is to express an activity that will be finished before a particular time in the future.
It is to note that word expressions such as by the time, before, by, etc., are commonly used in a future perfect sentence.
So, we have future perfect tense that simply explains an action that occurs and completes itself before a certain point in the future. Although it might get confusing regarding its uses, they become easy once the concept is clear.