Grammat: "He'll have said" The phrase: "He'll have said exactly what he thought they wanted to hear". As we do not have a time factor here, we can concider, that the sentense is a form of a predict

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Igor

Grammat: "He'll have said" The phrase: "He'll have said exactly what he thought they wanted to hear". As we do not have a time factor here, we can concider, that the sentense is a form of a prediction of what that guy-he thinks has already hapened now. So, the person telling that hasn't seen the real situation on his own, but has been out of the place of the action. And the phrase is only his assuranse of what has alrady happened somewhere there? Otherwise he would say "He has said exactly what he thought they wanted to hear". Right?

2016年4月25日 16:42

解答 · 8

Actually, there is a time reference here; it's in the future, and in your case it's not explicit, but a notional time when you find out what happened. (If you like, you can think of it as the time when you and your conversation partner next get together with "him".) If you knew already that he had said his piece, then, yes, you would use a simple past, but you don't know that. You knew at one point in the past that he was going to, but it may or may not have happened, and if it did, you don't know for sure what what he said. "He'll have said" here means roughly "It will turn out that he said", and it is a future perfect construction, which you otherwise may have [will have?!] come across with an explicit time reference, e.g. "He will have arrived by the time we get there".

2016年4月25日