I was working with a group of ESL students discussing complex verb 
phrases.  We discussed this sentence: "He had finished with his homework by 
the time he arrived."  One of the students asked whether it would be 
acceptable to say "He was finished with his homework by the time he 
arrived."  I said it would be, but to my chagrin, I could not explain the 
verb phrase.  I sent query below to [log in to unmask]

-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: Friday, May 18, 2007 8:00 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: QUESTION FOR THE GRAMMARIAN 


From: [log in to unmask] 
     Subject: passives, phrasal verbs
     Message:  I was recently confronted with this sentence: He was 
finished with his home work by the time he arrived.  Problem: Although the 
construction is BE + Past participle, this doesn't appear to be either a 
passive or a linking verb plus adjective.  Additionally, I suspect that the 
main verb is phrasal: finish with.  Most uses of this construction seem 
pretty straightforward: He will finish with his studies in June; he had 
finished with his studies by the time I knew him, etc.  I'm just not sure 
how to analyze the 'was finished with' construction. Now I'm wondering 
if 'to be finished with' is verbal idom. What am I missing?  Thanks  Janet 
Castilleja 

 And I got this reply:

Here is a list of phrasal verbs. "Finish with" is not part of it, as you 
can see. As for analyzing that particular sentence fragment, I think it's 
just the imperfect tense. Hope this helps.
	Athena Sargent
	http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/phrasals.htm

'Finish with' is listed as a phrasal verb in Phrasal Verbs (Courtney, 1983, 
Longman), but with not quite the same meaning.  I already knew this when I 
sent the question to grammar_q.  I had also spent some time with Quirk, 
Leech, Greenbaum and Svartik as well as the Oxford and Cambridge grammars 
without coming up with a satisfactory explanation - false passive? 
idiomatic phrasal verb?

Most of the resources I've looked at don't even seem to acknowledge an 
imperfect 'tense' in English, although I've found some interesting 
discusions of 'imperfective' vs 'perfective.'

What are your thoughts?  This is currently occupying way too much of my 
time.


Janet Castilleja

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