-2

I came across the following example from the textbook Advanced Grammar in Use by Martin Hewings.

To say that we think a past situation actually happened, we use will have + past participle:

As it was cloudy, few people will have seen last night’s lunar eclipse.

Why isn't the past simple or past perfect used in the aforementioned example?

As it was cloudy, few people saw last night’s lunar eclipse.

Community
  • 1
kacherese
  • 295
  • Your past simple is used to state a fact, and not what we think happened. You actually clearly say that yourself. What is unclear about the difference between "I think that X happened" and "X happened (it's a fact"? – oerkelens Aug 09 '15 at 09:36
  • If I think that situation HAPPENED, doesn't it mean that it is a fact? – kacherese Aug 09 '15 at 09:47
  • @kacherese Only in the minds of deluded people. – Joost Kiefte Aug 09 '15 at 09:50
  • If what you think happened is a fact, you claim to be God or something. If I think something happened, I might be wrong. As @JoostKiefte says, only deluded people will claim that their opinion is fact. – oerkelens Aug 09 '15 at 10:03
  • 1
    This question belongs on [ell.se] – Kris Aug 09 '15 at 10:09
  • @oerkelens I'm not sure it has much to do with "one's thinking," in fact -- it's possibly about the possibility. . – Kris Aug 09 '15 at 10:10
  • 1
    @Kris I believe the grammar book is not far off in stating that this construction implies that the speaker thinks there is a (high) possibility that something happened. Of course, that is very different from stating that it is a fact. – oerkelens Aug 09 '15 at 10:18

1 Answers1

2

Because it was cloudy last night, few people saw the lunar eclipse.
Because it was cloudy last night, few people will have seen the lunar eclipse.

In what way is the speaker of the second sentence changing the statement, by using a future perfect?

The speaker is making a kind of prediction. Time will show that few people saw it. In the very near future, people will be saying they didn't see it. The future perfect there is a very mild form of "Mark my words". We have no reason to expect otherwise. One could even add "I expect" or "one expects" to the sentence:

Because it was cloudy last night, I expect few people will have seen the lunar eclipse.

TimR
  • 21,116