English Language: "will meet with X" vs. "will be meeting with X"

[UDS]

@SciFiSam

. . . I’ve never heard of this at all. In fact, the opposite is true - if you meet with someone (in British English, at least; I’m British) that implies a planned meeting, whereas “meet” can be planned or unplanned. Maybe there’s a dialect difference. Both terms are transitive, in that they require an object; is that the term you meant to use?

The OED has “to come across, come upon by chance” as the primary meaning of “meet with” - On my way to work I met with an accident, in first pregnancies we meet with eclampsia in about 1 in 500 cases, as I was going over the far-famed Kerry mountains I met with Captain Farrell and his money he was counting. It has a secondary meaning “to go to see a person intentionally”, but notes that this is “chiefly N. Amer.”.

It could be, of course, that the N. Amer. sense is currently coming to predominate in Britain; it wouldn’t be the first time.

You are right, of course, that in both usages the verb is transitive. I should have distinguished between the usage with a direct object (“I met him”) and the usage with a prepositional object (“I met with him”).

[SciFiSam]

@Learjeff

With all due respect to your experience speaking English, I was surprised to find that I agree with SciFiSam. I’m not speaking academically, but simply as someone who’s 56 and lived in the US all my life, with doctorate-level parents, and generally surrounded by college graduates in professional and private life. (Including many who abuse language terribly.)

My understanding of the tenses was as given above, where the difference between “I will x” and “I will be xing” is one of duration or repetition implied in the second case.

But after considering SciFiSam’s post, I find (to my surprise, since I thought he was wrong) only examples that agree. Let’s take your example.

If i’m sitting in a room and the guy with the only key says “I’ll be locking the door when I leave, so if you go on a smoke break you won’t be able to get back in” that sounds more natural than “I’ll lock the door.”

The latter sounds more natural when someone asks “Who’ll lock the door?” and it’s a clear example of SFS’s post. Or “I WILL lock the door!” in response to someone suggesting carelessness.

This is an implication of tense that I had never considered, but one I find works very well with what sounds natural.

Thanks - you’ve saved me some time. Quercus, you’re right that “I’ll lock the door” sounds like the kind of sentence you’re most likely to hear, but that’s because you’re most likely to hear it as an offer or a new decision, not a prearranged plan.

OTOH, if it is definitely a plan - say, a different person locks the doors of a shop each day - then the present continuous again becomes the natural tense to use. Who’s locking the door tonight? John is (locking the door).

“Need” is a stative verb and can’t be used in the continuous form.

If you take some time to read a little about grammar - stuff aimed at English language learners is much more accessible than stuff aimed at linguistics students - you’ll understand what I’m talking about.

QED, that’s true about the meaning of meet with when it comes to problems. It’s not the way I’ve heard it used when taking about meeting people, but, as you say, perhaps that is due to American influence.

[Deegeea]

They all sound fine to me, as alternate ways to say the same thing. But the way I’d actually write it in my own business emails is one that has yet to be suggested. “I have a meeting with X tomorrow” is what comes most naturally to me.

I also think Sam’s explanation above is the likeliest way to explain it to non native speakers. It’s not the intuitive understanding of a native speaker of why they say it that way, but it’s pretty close to how it comes out, and a lot simpler, and I’ll save it for future use.

Tenses are confusing in any language! Some languages don’t even have a future tense.

[Quercus]

I still think that “After that screw up, the boss will be killing him when he gets in tomorrow” is much less natural than “After that screw-up, the boss will kill him when he gets in tomorrow”.

And how is “I will pick up the car at 7:30” not definite? Contrariwise, how is “If you see me honeymooning in Aruba with a supermodel, I will be enjoying myself” anything definite?

Again, I agree that often the progressive hints at definite plans more than the regular future, but that is only a side effect. Mostly because the progressive is referring to a span of time, which kind of (but not necessarily) implies a particular span of time. I suspect also that because a plan is something that just exists, without actually doing anything, and exists right now if we’re talking about it, our brains find it more natural to use more passive existence-based verb forms when we’re talking about them.
In the end, of course, language means whatever people understand it to mean.

But it’s pretty easy to come up with counterexamples to “the progressive always means certain plans and the future tense doesn’t”, and it’s hard to come up with counterexamples to “the future emphasizes the action, while the progressive emphasizes the state of the actor and/or the period of time.”

If linguists who have actually thought about this disagree with me, please point me to them (I think I can probably understand it. If not I have a couple PhD linguists I can ask to help.)

[Learjeff]

@Quercus

I still think that “After that screw up, the boss will be killing him when he gets in tomorrow” is much less natural than “After that screw-up, the boss will kill him when he gets in tomorrow”.

Speculative prediction.

And how is “I will pick up the car at 7:30” not definite?

New decision.

Contrariwise, how is “If you see me honeymooning in Aruba with a supermodel, I will be enjoying myself” anything definite?

Speculative. One might even use the subjunctive here: “If you were to see me …” Maybe I’m getting subjunctive wrong though.

In any case, I think your examples above illustrate SFS’s point, although your reason for the distinction is a good one (not that reasons for things linguistic are usually reasonable!)

Don’t equate “definite plans” with “the truth of the matter”. I suspect “previously made plans” might be better than “definite plans”.

[Laggard]

@doreen

This is just my own experience but the way I’ve seen them used is
" I will meet with X tomorrow " usually means that X doesn’t know about the meeting or that no meeting has been scheduled yet. It’s a statement about my plans.

"I will be meeting with X tomorrow" means that X is aware of the meeting  and there is some sort of schedule involved , although it may be a very loose schedule such as " sometime tomorrow"

Yes

[doreen]

@Quercus

But no intelligent native speaker who needs to communicate if something is definite would rely on that tiny implication in the verb form; they’d say “I will meet, but haven’t set it up with them yet” or “I will meet next Tuesday at 1:00”. And, again, this implication just isn’t there for most other verbs besides ‘to meet’.

No ,no one would rely on that implication if it was important to communicate whether it’s definite or not. But I think that perhaps there needs to be a little more context.

For example, I’m speaking to my supervisor, and he informs me of some issue regarding one of my staff. My supervisor asks how I am going to address it. If I answer “I will meet with him tomorrow”, there’s an implication that this meeting is a result of being given this information. If instead I say “I will be meeting with him tomorrow”, there’s almost an implied “and will add this to the agenda”.