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Can we use the absolute phrase in the future tenses with two actions? For example,

"The sun having risen tomorrow, we will set out on our journey"

I understand that the ‘having+ past participle’ construction is generally used to refer to a past, completed action. But I wonder, can we ever use the ‘having+ past participle’ to describe about something that will happen in future?

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  • The sun having risen = Once the sun has risen. Better.
    – Lambie
    Commented Dec 21, 2021 at 16:34
  • @Lambie Could you be more precise about their usage in the future tenses being correct or not? Also, how about this sentence, "The sun being risen tomorrow, we will set out on our journey" ?
    – Airforce
    Commented Dec 21, 2021 at 18:41
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    It is just not idiomatic: the sun rises, the sun rose, the sun has risen. It is an intransitive verb. Ergo: being risen would imply an agent. And intransitive verbs don't have agents. It is not about the future, it is about the verb rise. Once the sun has risen, we will set out on our journey.
    – Lambie
    Commented Dec 21, 2021 at 18:53
  • I certainly agree with @Lambie. I'll just add that "to be" + past participle of an intransitive verb of change or motion (rise, become, etc.) used to be very common in English. There are many examples in the King James Bible, for example. However, now it is generally archaic.
    – MarcInManhattan
    Commented Dec 21, 2021 at 19:48

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No, ["having" + past participle] cannot be used to describe something in the future. It means the action is finished. Sometimes that structure has a meaning similar to "after..." but it's more like, "once it was true that the sun had risen", rather than "after the sun has risen".

So your example sentence means something like,

Because the sun has risen tomorrow, we will set out on our journey.

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  • Thanks. But a similar construction looks fine in the past tense, like "[After the sun had risen, we set out on our journey] The sun having risen, we set out on our journey"-- doesn't it?
    – Airforce
    Commented Dec 22, 2021 at 16:16
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    Yes, that construction is perfect English, but it's not equivalent to my gloss above: "Once it was true that the sun had risen, we set out on our journey" still makes sense. But if talking about the future, that gloss doesn't make sense.
    – gotube ♦
    Commented Dec 22, 2021 at 18:20

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