Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-07T16:34:49.411Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The past perfect with future time reference

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2008

Renaat Declerck
Renaat Declerck
Affiliation:
Katholieke Universiteit LeuvenUniversitaire Campus, E. Sabbelaan 53B-8500 [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The standard analysis of the past perfect is that it represents the time of a situation as anterior to a time of orientation which is itself past with respect to the time of speech. However, there are a couple of uses in which the situation referred to actually lies in the future. This article concentrates on one of these uses, illustrated by sentences like Soon you will again be able to do all the things that you had done before. In this use, the past perfect refers to the future and there does not seem to be a past time of orientation at all. The article not only attempts to account for this use of the past perfect but also offers an explanation for the fact that the same tense cannot be used in other, seemingly similar, sentences, such as the following: [If you peep through this hole in the curtain] you will see the audience that {have/*had} come to see the play.

Type
Articles
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , May 1997 , pp. 49 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allen, R. L. (1966). The verb system of present-day American English. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Comrie, B. (1985). Tense. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Declerck, R. (1991). Tense in English: its structure and use in discourse. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Declerck, R. (1995). Is there a relative past tense in English? Lingua 97: 1–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Declerck, R. (1997). When-clauses and temporal structure. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Declerck, R. & Depraetere, I. (1995). The double system of tense forms referring to future time in English. Journal of Semantics 12: 269–310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edgren, E. (1971). Temporal clauses in English. Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksell.Google Scholar
Fillmore, C. (1976). Pragmatics and the description of discourse. In Schmidt, S. J. (ed.), Pragmatik/pragmatics 2. Munich: Fink. 83–104.Google Scholar
Tregidgo, P. S. (1979). Tense subordination1. English Language Teaching Journal 33: 191–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wekker, H. C. (1980). Temporal subordination in English. In Zonneveld, W. & Weerman, F. (eds.), Linguistics in the Netherlands 1977–79. Dordrecht: Foris. 96–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar