Tense

Question

1. By the time we arrived , the other guests were already there.

2. By the time we arrived , the other guests had already been there.

Which one is right?Is it necessary to use perfect with ' by the time'

Clive · Accepted Answer

#1 Fine. They were still there.

#2 Fine, but it means they came and then left before I arrived.

UbuEng · Answer

The two sentences may have different meanings because the meaning of 2 is unclear or incomplete.
'By the time' is a phrase that is almost the same as saying 'when' but is often used to suggest that there has been some delay. It would be similar in meaning to 'when we finally arrived'. But the phrase still points to the time of arrival so essentially is it the same as saying 'when we arrived' because both sentences have another clause that indicate the conditions found at the time of arrival. These are simultaneous actions - we arrived, the guests were there. Notice that in both of your sentences the phrase is used with the past simple 'we arrived', not the other tenses. The phrase can used with different tenses.

By the time we arrived at the party, the other guests were leaving. - past simple, past continuous - simultaneous action.

By the time we are arriving, This doesn't work because the phrase points to a time other then the present, and the verb is really just present - it is awkward at best, native speakers would not use this construction.

By the time we arrive, This works because it is the present simple with future meaning (not the present).

Sentence 1 is fine. The meaning is clear, the grammar is correct.
Sentence 2 may be grammatically sound but the meaning is ambiguous - it's very difficult to interpret the intended meaning.

By the time we arrived , the other guests had already been there.

What's this past perfect tense actually mean? Well it has different uses but generally it refers to an earlier past completed action that relates to a later past point in time, normally across two clauses, typically with two verbs. So, if the guests had been there, that's a past completed action, strongly suggesting that they were not there 'when we arrived' - The past perfect tense is the past in the past and doesn't really tell us anything about the status of the action at later pints in time. Were they still there? Maybe but probably not, since the action 'to be there' is all in the past (they had been there). You could rescue the sentence with a complement:

By the time we arrived , the other guests had already been there for several hours.

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