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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 KortrijkBelgiumRenaat.Declerck@kulak.ac.be
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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

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