Laurence Rosier et Marc Wilmet : The revisited "sequence of tenses"
The starting point of this article is to revisit the "sequence of tenses" in a more general problematics, wondering about the relationship between tenses and co(n)text. Indeed, the sequence of tenses offers a particular cotext of use which was studied mainly, in French and English, under the restricted angle of the introducers verbs and /or the temporal articulation, whether mechanical or semantic, between verbs of the sentence and the under-sentence. In the light of a monosemist approach of verbal tenses, we advance two simple rules:
(i) The verbal form with the past is the sufficient condition of "imparfait" in the under- sentence but is not a necessary condition (cf the "imparfait" in the under-sentence with a nonlast verbal form).
(ii) The co(n)textuals elements are necessary conditions but never sufficient of a present (because the secant aspect of "imparfait" entitles it to play the same role).
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