Approche procédurale et référence temporelle du futur de l’indicatif en français

Abstract

This essay analyses the future tense in the French verbal system in order to explore its semantic content, as well as its contribution to the fixation of temporal reference. Our study adopts a procedural perspective: we argue that the future tense has an instructional content that leads the hearer to a temporal — or other- interpretation of a given occurrence. We also contend that the semantics of the future tense is underdetermined and, thus, it must be filled by the hearer with co(n)textual information during the pragmatic process of interpretation. The analysis of the procedural meaning coded in the future tense — around three temporal coordinates — and its function in various linguistic environments prompts us to deal with temporality and aspectuality. Besides, it leads us to distinguish, among other things, a default instruction that we perceive as the trigger of a deictic calculation of the future temporal reference.