1191: Non-Future "As Soon As" Mar 14, 2018

As has been discussed here, while there is a past tense and a future aspect in English, both of them overlap somewhat with the present tense, syntactically. This is true of non-past before in which a subordinate clause with 'before' at the start will take the present tense, even though it is semantically in the past (even more so than the independent clause, indeed). This is also the exact same situation with 'after' possibly, but there are other words for which the present tense is used to indicate semantic future. The phrase "as soon as" like in "as soon as I finish game, we will go out" indicates that the action of completing the work is sometime in the future, but is grammatically present. Notably, both here and with non-past before, the reason that it is present tense is because it must act in a sequence with another future aspect or past tense verb respectively. If you have other examples, please comment.
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