Present perfect tense

Question

Is this sentence correct? 'She has already arrived at the restaurant for a few minutes.'Thanks.

Clive · Accepted Answer

Hi,

Yes.

She is there now, and she plans to stay there for a few minutes. Is this what you mean?

Clive

Anonymous · Answer

Yes. Thank you very much.

Terryxpress · Answer

'She has already arrived at the restaurant for a few minutes.'
There is a problem with this sentence and the use of 'for':
Note these sentences
I have been here for 20 minutes.
John hasn't called for 6 months.
He has worked here for a long time.

Let's just take the first and look at it pictorially:

............|<A....here..........>|T_NOW............

A= the moment of arrival. After that, you are 'here'.

T= the period of time from A, to NOW, the moment of speaking, and that period of time is 20 minutes.

Note how in both of the other sentences, 'for' introduces a time period, starting from a point in the past, up to NOW - not starting from NOW and going forward in time 'for a few minutes'.

Let's look at your sentence :

It begins 'he has already arrived'.

'arrived' =reach a place at the end of a journey. That is, 'arrived' is a point, 'the end', not a period of time. The period of time involved is actually from departure to arrival. You have either 'arrived' or ''not arrived'. No period of time is involved with the point in time when the person can be said 'to have arrived'.

You cannot talk about someone 'arriving for a few minutes' or any period of time, because 'arriving is the end point.

And if the intended meaning is 'she has arrived and has been here for a few minutes already', then 'for a few minutes' straight after the Present Perfect is ungrammatical and illogical.

Two options are:

'She has already arrived at the restaurant. She has been here for a few minutes.'

or

"She arrived earlier than expected, and has been here for a few minutes.'

There will be more ways of expressing this...but not as in the original sentence.

Dimsumexpress · Answer

She has already arrived at the restaurant for a few minutes.'There is a problem with this sentence and the use of 'for':Note these sentencesI have been here for 20 minutes.John hasn't called for 6 months.He has worked here for a long time.

I tend to agree with Terryxpress.

Terryxpress · Answer

Perhaps the simplest sentence would be:
"She has already arrived at the restaurant. She arrived a few minutes ago."

Present perfect tense

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