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Absolutely perfect? What is the status of ‘futur antérieur’?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 September 2001

Dulcie M. Engel
Dulcie M. Engel
Affiliation:
University of Wales, Swansea
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Abstract

Discussions of absolute and relative tense often focus on the futur antérieur (FA), which has variously been descibed as a tense, aspect and mood. In order to assess its place in the French verbal system, an analysis of a written media-based corpus was carried out. This revealed that, although relatively rare, FA functions as a tense-aspect with some modal values in a range of publications and a variety of newspaper text types. Furthermore, its use as an epistemic modal and as an equivalent to passé composé (PC), as discussed in recent literature, appears to fulfil a significant function in journalistic writing.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of French Language Studies , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , September 2001 , pp. 201 - 220
Copyright
© 2001 Cambridge University Press

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