Can “as soon as” ever mean “immediately after”?

Solution 1:

My first thought was to agree with tchrist's comment, that OP's construction is ungrammatical. But suppose you've just bought something over the phone, and you ask when it will be delivered:

"I can't promise anything, but if you're lucky it will arrive as soon as next week"

I'm certainly not going to say that's "ungrammatical". But it wouldn't mean immediately after - it would mean [perhaps] as early as [the stated date/time]

An example from Google Books: As soon as an hour after a queen disappears, the lack of her pheromonal presence is pretty well understood by all or most of the bees in the colony.

Having said that, I do in fact agree that OP's specific usage isn't grammatical. My examples are okay because they're as soon as [some point in time], where OP has [some duration of time].

Solution 2:

The sentence, as written, does not make any sense in the English language. It is therefore open to any number of interpretations.It doesn't mean immediately after in the sentence.

To me, and entirely dependent upon the context in which it is placed, it could be better written as: "He got home within two hours" "He was home within two hours" "Within two hours he was home" "He was home before the two hour deadline had expired" Visit (http://www.yahoo.com) As soon as means immediately not immediately after.

Solution 3:

I'm not sure how to interpret the original example, but I would expect one of the following two formulations to express the intended meaning:

He got home within 2 hours [of some unnidentified event].

or

He got home in as little as 2 hours [after some unidentified event].

Neither of these formulations suffers from the ambiguity of the original example, but they say very different things. The first establishes 2 hours as the outside limit of the length of time the person took to get home. The second establishes 2 hours as the inner limit of the length of time the person took to get home.

Solution 4:

The phrase as soon as is idiomatic with a fixed meaning. It references an instant, a point in time, or (the moment of occurrence of) an event, not a duration as in the OP's sentence. See examples below.

Also, it cannot be used as in the example for semantic reasons. Grammar treats an idiomatic expression as a syntactic unit and as such it is not an issue of grammar but only semantic validity.

as soon as
at the same time or a very short time after As soon as I saw her, I knew there was something wrong.
immediately after something I'll call you as soon as I get home from work.
immediately at or shortly after the time that call as soon as you get there; let us know as soon as you get the news from the hospital

It may be used in the sense of as early as, though it is not entirely correct from the definition of the idiom:

He could jump right into the starting lineup and play limited minutes or he could come off the bench for a few games to get back in rhythm. He could come back as soon as Wednesday or he could wait until after the All-Star break. Danny Granger close to return

(i.e., as early as Wednesday)

Android 4.2.2 rumored to debut as soon as this month Yahoo! News

(i.e., as early as this month)
Even in these cases, it is still referring to a point in time, not a duration.