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Question

Difficulty: HardVerbs, Tenses, and Aspect

Complete the sentence below by providing the grammatically appropriate verb tense and aspect form for the blank.

Answer:By the time the diplomatic envoy arrives at the summit next month, the bilateral commission 【will have been negotiating】 its draft security protocol for over two years.

Answer

will have been negotiating
The form 'will have been negotiating' correctly applies the future perfect continuous aspect. The temporal prepositional phrase 'By the time... arrives' projects the scene to a future point, while 'for over two years' marks duration preceding that moment. Expressing an action in progress up to a future reference point requires the modal 'will' combined with the perfect progressive auxiliaries 'have been' and the main verb participle.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the temporal anchors provided in the sentence.
The clause 'By the time the diplomatic envoy arrives' sets a future benchmark, while the phrase 'for over two years' specifies an ongoing duration of action prior to that benchmark.
When an event is projected to continue over a duration of time up until a specific point in the future, the Future Perfect Continuous (Progressive) tense is required.
2
Formulate the correct auxiliary and participle structure for the verb 'negotiate'.
Combine the future modal auxiliary ('will'), the perfect auxiliary ('have'), the continuous marker ('been'), and the present participle ('negotiating') to form 'will have been negotiating'.
This sequence properly encodes both the future temporal reference point and the progressive aspect of the duration.

Key Concept

Future Perfect Continuous Tense and Aspect
Estimated Time:1m 30s
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Topics

Verbs, Tenses, and Aspect

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