Languages should have tenses for spacelike separation. My friend and I do something in parallel, it’s ambiguous/irrelevant which one comes first, I want to say something like “I expect my friend <spacelike version of will do/has done/is doing> their task in such-and-such a way”.
That sounds more like a tenseless sentence than using a spacelike separation tense. Your friend’s performance of the task may well be in your future or past lightcone (or extend through both), but you don’t wish to imply any of these.
There are languages with tenseless verbs, as well as some with various types of spatial tense.
The closest I can approximate this in English without clumsy constructs is “I expect my friend does their task in such-and-such a way”, which I agree isn’t very satisfactory.
Languages should have tenses for spacelike separation. My friend and I do something in parallel, it’s ambiguous/irrelevant which one comes first, I want to say something like “I expect my friend <spacelike version of will do/has done/is doing> their task in such-and-such a way”.
That sounds more like a tenseless sentence than using a spacelike separation tense. Your friend’s performance of the task may well be in your future or past lightcone (or extend through both), but you don’t wish to imply any of these.
There are languages with tenseless verbs, as well as some with various types of spatial tense.
The closest I can approximate this in English without clumsy constructs is “I expect my friend does their task in such-and-such a way”, which I agree isn’t very satisfactory.
Who would have thought that someone would ever look at CSP and think “I want english to be more like that”?
lol
Future perfect (hey, that’s the name of the show!) seems like a reasonable hack for this in English