Quand le futur antérieur n'exprime pas le futur

Abstract

ln her article Ewa Ciszewska attempted to present the retrospect:ive value (summary or synthesis) of the future perfeet tense (futur antérieur). Futur antérieur is often used in press articles for underlining peculiar nature of an event from the past and for summarizing it, e.g. L'année 2001 aura été fatale pour l'économie mondiale. An analysis of the context maltes it possible to indicate the elements which allow the reader to choose the correct interpretation of the futur antérieur tense. These elements comprise the expressions like: il aura fallu x temps pour..., il aura suffi de... pour..., summarizing expressions: au total, au final, en déÎUlitive, adversative phrases: en revache, néanmoins, pourtant and the adverbs jamais and rarement when they appear at the beginning of a sentence. ln such utterances one can usually find continuative verbs (llre, durer, valoir) which are used with adverbials of time, thus indicating certain segments of time.