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Which tense should I use for actions which terminate exactly at the present time and the final point of the action is also the present moment? Can present perfect be used for this type of situation?

Let's imagine a boy who left his house to go to his school sometime before the present time and I am a teacher standing at the door of his school now. Can I say "He has come to school" or "He came to school" at the first time he is at the borderline of the school when his coming exactly terminates at the present time and the action includes now (the present time)?

I think using past tense is not appropriate here because the action includes the present moment and using the past form requires the action to locate in some past section in the timeline.

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    A British speaker would say "He has just come to school", or, better still, "He has just arrived at school". American usage may be different.
    – Kate Bunting
    Commented Jan 7, 2020 at 8:31
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    We need the context of the utterance. Where are you standing. Who are you speaking to. "He has come to school" is certainly grammatical and conveys the correct information, but that alone does not mean that's what you'd want to say. You might go with "He is here", or "he's arrived", or "I can see him now", or "there he is". The tense is not the issue. The "to school" is. Whoever you are talking to would be aware of the location by that point. Just like they are aware of who "he" is. Making it very strange that you'd go and state it once again.
    – RegDwigнt
    Commented Jan 7, 2020 at 11:59
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    If I'm standing on the porch waiting for my brother, talking to my mom on the phone, I would not tell her "he has come to Reg's house". It is perfectly grammatical and conveys perfectly correct information. But it would be an extremely unnatural thing for me to say.
    – RegDwigнt
    Commented Jan 7, 2020 at 12:03
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    He has just died. He has just [this minute] got here. I have just finished. I have just realised that.... It has just [this minute] struck me that.... He has come [to school] by bus. // In other situations, the past simple is idiomatic: He died five minutes ago. He got here just a minute ago. He came to school by bus today. // 'Padding' (ie natural-sounding immediate context) is often needed to make the grammatical sound natural.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Feb 6, 2020 at 11:43
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    If something terminates this exact moment (e.g. someone's journey), you need to decide whether you're emphasising it having finished OR it being just finishing but not entirely done. So you say "He has arrived"/"He is here" OR "He is just arriving"/"He is about to arrive"/"He has almost arrived"/"He is coming through the door". This will generally depend on what you're saying, which might be "He's arrived, so let's do something", or "He is arriving, let's do something when he's ready." It's all about context and pragmatics. There's no tense or aspect for "arrival completed now".
    – Stuart F
    Commented May 31, 2021 at 21:07

4 Answers 4

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One would usually say: "He just came to school."

"He has come" indeed suggests that the action was completed in the past; "he came" isn't specific enough. So the adverb "just" clarifies things.

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    I have certainly heard that in American mouths, but it is not natural in British English (or, at least, wasn't fifty years ago when I was growing up - I think there's been a drift). For me, just (in that sense) is incompatible with a simple past.
    – Colin Fine
    Commented Jan 21, 2023 at 17:55
  • @ColinFine I'm from America, so that makes sense. "He has just come to school" would, I take it, be correct in British English.
    – alphabet
    Commented Jan 21, 2023 at 17:58
  • I don't do "correct", but it is completely natural sounding.
    – Colin Fine
    Commented Jan 21, 2023 at 18:00
  • I completely disagree that Americans don't use just with the present perfect. I do. I think he has just arrived. Perfectly natural and totally AmE. Maybe, it's a question of education. Anyway, the word just is nowhere in the question.
    – Lambie
    Commented Mar 22, 2023 at 20:11
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To convey the fact that something terminated at the current moment, you can use the word just.

He has just arrived;

this would tend to be more common in the U.K.

He just arrived;

this would tend to be more common in the U.S.

However, Ngrams shows that both tenses are used on both sides of the Atlantic (100 years ago, present perfect would have been the preferred tense on both sides). Americans started this departure from traditional grammar, but Ngrams seems to show that the U.K. is quickly catching up.

Neither "he has arrived" nor "he arrived" by itself conveys the fact that it is happening now, or that it happened only a short while ago.

As an American, I would say that just overrides the requirement that you use present perfect tense for things that are ending at the present moment. Traditional British grammar says that just triggers the perfect tense, and that you must use present perfect with just.

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In general speech, the former, "He has come to school", needs more information when being said. But that's not to mean that the former can be rendered ungrammatical as the verb come is an intransitive verb. Nonetheless, I'd rephrase it in two ways:

He has finally come to school!

The above can be said when the person is still entering the school compound, and is mostly said when the teacher/pedagogue is exasperated.

If you want to use the latter usage he came to school, then I'd associate a time with it. When you just say he came to school, that'd leave a lot of questions unanswered. For example, when did he come to school? This is because of the time lapsed between the person's current location and the time when the person's entered the school compound.

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  • What did you mean with "as the come is an intransitive verb" ?
    – Help Me911
    Commented Jan 7, 2020 at 10:12
  • @HelpMe911 It means come, in its verb form is intransitive. Read what en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intransitive_verb has to say.
    – Noaman Ali
    Commented Jan 7, 2020 at 10:27
  • I know what intransitive means but, I don't understand why you specified it ?
    – Help Me911
    Commented Jan 7, 2020 at 10:37
  • @HelpMe911 By mentioning that, I was alluding to the fact that "He has come to school" is not ungrammatical, and can be used. If "come" were transitive, then the sentence should have been extrapolated to retain its grammatical correctness.
    – Noaman Ali
    Commented Jan 7, 2020 at 10:50
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Which tense should I use for actions which terminate exactly at the present time and the final point of the action is also the present moment?

You need to understand that "the present time" in linguistics is the time of speaking. So the present time can be located in the time frame only after whatever action the speaker describes, because you can't describe an action that has not happened yet, unless you're describing a future event or an ongoing event (for which you'd need the progressive form).

Can I say "He has come to school" or "He came to school" at the first time he is at the borderline of the school when his coming exactly terminates at the present time and the action includes now (the present time)?

In your example, therefore, his coming doesn't actually terminate at the present time, nor does the action include "now", because the time of speaking (a.k.a, the present time or "now") only starts after "the first time he is at the borderline of the school".

That is, the action you describe is actually in the past. So either the past tense ("He came to school") or the present perfect ("He has come to school") can describe the past action of him coming to school. Choosing the present perfect doesn't mean that the action happens at the same time you speak, any more than choosing the past tense does.

In general, the choice is dependent on how you (the speaker) would view the event. In this particular example, though, the difference between AmE and BrE may well come into play.

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