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The STUDIA UNIVERSITATIS BABEŞ-BOLYAI issue article summary
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Abstract: The purpose of the article is to analyse the way in which different Romance languages express past and future tenses. These tenses have diverse implications on the morphology of the verb and syntax. Thus, in the case of verbs that use different roots, as for instance the verb to go, it is impossible not to be surprised by the difference existing between the root of the past tense (the root allin j’allai, tu allas... and j’allais, tu allais, il allait, as well as the plural form of the verb, present tense nous allons and vous allez) and the root of the future tense in French (the root ir- preserved directly from Latin) while the Italian presents an impressive regularity regarding the root (on the one hand andavo, andai and, on the other hand, andrò, andrei). My article wishes to describe this opposition and to show the differences between French and Italian syntax illustrated by the future tense and the conditional. There are clear differences between expressing future and conditional in French and expressing future and conditional in Italian: se + future expresses a hypothesis in Italian — se verrai domani, ti darò una caramella — while the French si + future is not the expression of a hypothesis: *Si tu viendras demain... cannot express a hypothesis in French. On the other hand, while the French perfect conditional can be used in order to show a hypothesis in two forms : simple and compound (e.g: "je savais bien que je vous aurais retrouvés" or "je savais bien que je vous retrouverais"), the Italian language accepts only one form, a compound one (e.g.: "sapevo che vi avrei ritrovati" / "sapevo che vi ***ritroverei"). We can notice that the Spanish language, which has preserved the root ir- for the future (iré, iras, ira...) and for the conditional (iría, irías, iría...), cannot express a hypothesis by using the future form of the verb: "*si vendrás mañana..." is impossible in Spanish in the same way as "*si tu viendras demain..." in French. Moreover, the Spanish language can use the simple conditional form in the past: "me dijo que vendría". My article will describe the connection and the coherence of such morphological and syntactical constraints.
Keywords: future tense, past tense, Romance languages, root. |
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