This. People misuse words and phrases all the time. I would scramble silently to parse this sentence and look for other contextual clues, and if I couldn’t figure it out, I might ask a clarifying question. I would refrain from pointing out to this person that they had essentially said the opposite of what they meant to say, but I’d judge them. ;-p
It actually kind of sounds like the speaker is trying to avoid saying she didn’t finish.
“Hey, so Pam ran the marathon this morning, right?”
“Uh, yeah…”
“Cool! How’d she do?”
“Um, well, she was a little slower than she was hoping for…”
“Well, hey, even just finishing a marathon is an accomplishment!”
“…”
“She did finish, right?”
“Just about…”
In my English as a second language vernacular, starting a sentence with “I find” indicates what follows is a description of how I experience the sentence rather than a grammar lesson by a prescriptivist linguistics PhD.
I agree with pulykamell. What you’re describing there is the past participle form, and there’s no reason whatsoever to believe that the past participle is intended in the absence of an auxiliary verb (like “had”). In my view your conclusion is wrong because in common usage the vernacular expression “just about made it across the line” can double as both simple past tense and past participle, so while it would make sense as in your aliens example, it’s even more fitting as simple past tense. Strictly speaking it is only the simple past tense, and your example should have read “she was running a marathon and had just about made it across the line when the aliens arrived” but the strict past participle form is often omitted in the informal vernacular. IMHO.
“Just about” can imply “it’s close enough to be hard to tell without more precise measurements”. If you’re timing the race by looking at your wristwatch that only shows hours and minutes, you might say “she just about beat her personal record”. The official timers with their precision stopwatches might then verify that she did indeed beat her record, or that she fell a little bit short.
But if I heard that she had just about finished the race, I would interpret that as referring to a moment in time when she was a small amount short of the finish line. She probably will completely finish a short time later, but she hasn’t quite yet.
I voted 2 because to me “just about” means approximately. She may or may not have actually crossed the finish line, but either just did or will very shortly. It doesn’t mean to fail, it means to approximately finish. That is, either already finished or will be finished in a moment or two. My two cents.
Something is just about finished when all the real effort is done, there might be a few details to wrap up but if I turned it over now it would work as promised.
Just about is associated with the present tense to me.
Without any other context, I would assume the marathon was still ongoing and she was just about to finish it. If it was already over and she failed, I would probably stay she “didn’t quite” finish.
However it’s often used with an intensifier or superlative - “When she said ‘yes’ I was just about the happiest guy in the world” doesn’t mean that I was barely or marginally happy; it means that I was ecstatic. I was, if not actually the happiest guy in the world, then very nearly so.
This means that it can take the opposite colour when used in a negative sense - “I just about failed the exam” means that I scraped a pass. And it’s an easy glide from there to “I just about passed the exam” meaning that I scraped a pass. So you will find it used in that sense also.
This semantic shift is facilitated by the fact “about” implies a range that straddles a point. If a girl is about 10 years old, then she may be either just under 10 or just over 10. So, semantically, “I just about reached the line” could mean that I fell short of the line, or that I barely crossed it.
As an American, I always took it to mean #1, but since I’ve started watching a lot of English Premiere League football/soccer, I’ve realized that the commentators use it to mean #2. So I think it’s very much dependent on where the speaker is from.
I would specifically disagree in this context. Anytime a person says they are just about finished or just about done with something, they never mean they are finished or done. They’re saying they’re approaching the end, not at the end or past the end.
I agree that in other contexts just about can mean approximately. When John Fogerty wrote “Early in the evening just about supper time” it could have been before, during, or after supper time.
I voted for option 2 in this context. I see I am in a minority - I suspect there is some British/American variation here. In the UK I think “just about” is most commonly used to mean “only just”. Whereas in the US, phrases such as “he just about burst a blood vessel” (i.e. the person did not in fact literally burst a blood vessel, but the phrase conveys that they are extremely angry) seems more common.
Consider as a further example this exchange:
“Did you make it to work on time?”
“Just about!”
To me, this means the person made it by the skin of their teeth, not that they might have been a couple of minutes late. But I can see it could easily have that other meaning, instead. Context, just like in the OP’s example, doesn’t always make it completely clear.
To me, it definitely does NOT mean #1. It might mean #2 (so I picked this), but not the clearest way to phrase this.
I checked the locations of the respondents. It seems that nearly everyone who picked #1 is from the Midwest or West of the US. (I was raised in the East of the US). So, it seems to be a little more specific than the geographic range noted in the previous post.
(If this usage originated in the Midwest, there’s a chance it parallels some expression in German — like the Upper Midwest phrase “come with.”).
I’ve had coworkers from whom it meant they’d changed their mind half-sentence about what they meant to say; from them, it meant “almost but not quite”. I’ve had others from whom it meant “yes but barely”. It’s the kind of expression where I need to listen to tone of voice or get other information from context.
US, Great Lakes (Inland Northern American) would be the greater dialect area. Specifically, Chicago, and more specifically, south/southwest side Chicago.
In this order:
1 - A status update, she is still running as is almost there.
2 - She is given the nod that she completed it ‘in spirit’ while perhaps not technically doing it all. Basically a success
3 - She came close but didn’t make it. Basically a failure
4 - There is a silent ‘didn’t’ in the statement as in she just about (didn’t) finish the race, meaning just making it with nothing left/by the skin of her teeth.