"By the time" Vs. "When"

Hello Grammar exchange members!

Please consider the following sentence from Naomi Shihab Nye's essay titled "Field Trip".

(a) By the time our workshops ended that summer, we felt more deeply bonded than other groups I'd known.

The knowledge that I have about the "by the time" adverb clause is that it is used with either the past perfect or future perfect in the main clause like the example sentences below.

(b) By the time I arrived at the party, everyone had already left.

But in sentence (a) the past perfect isn't used in the main clause. Also, I'm wondering if I can replace "by the time" with "when" in sentence (a).

Thanks in advance.

KDog

3/26/237:11 PM

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Gustavo, Co-ModeratorProfessor of Legal and Financial Translation

Hi, KDog,

@KDog posted:
(a) By the time our workshops ended that summer, we felt more deeply bonded than other groups I'd known.

That sentence works with the past simple in the main clause because, unlike "leave" in the other two sentences, "feel" expresses a state which, as such, had started to develop some time before the end of the workshops. It's not that, all of a sudden, they group experienced that feeling—instead, by the end of the workshops, they already felt closely together as a result of the gradual development of that feeling.

I think "when" could also work there, but it would not express that simultaneity between the development of the workshops and the growth of group bonding.

3/27/232:55 AM