IMAHO, the student is right to be troubled. The sentence should read:

 

( a ) We will finish the project tomorrow, or

( b ) We will have finished the project by tomorrow, or 

( c ) By tomorrow, we will have finished the project.

 

Past perfect: By the time something happened, something else had already happened.

 

Future perfect: By the time something happens, something else will have already happened.

 

Totally risk-free, non e cosi?

 

.brad.05mar09.

--- On Wed, 3/4/09, Cynthia Baird <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Would anyone care to comment on this sentence?  It came up in a literacy textbook I have to use, and a student had real difficulty with accepting this as a logical sentence.  I gave him my explanation about why I thought the sentence was problematic, but I would like to hear from some of you to know if I was right or wrong in my assessment of the sentence.

 

The sentence read as follows:

 

We will have finished the project tomorrow.

 

I know the sentence contains a future perfect, and I risk Brad's comments, but so be it.