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The use of the conditional perfect(c.p) in the subordinate clause,below, confuses me.

J'ai promis de lui preter le livre quand j'aurais fini de le lire.

I know that in french you always use the future after quand when you're refering to a future event and that the conditional is the future in the past, but my problem is why would you use the future perfect to express an action that had to have finished before the action in the main clause could happen?

I think my problem may be that I'm thinking of the of "promis" and the infinitive "preter" as happening at the same time in past when in fact "preter" happens at a later time.So it's

Promis(past)+preter(later past)+aurais fini(future perfect-after"promis but before "preter"), as opposed to

Promis(past)+preter(past simultaneous to "promis")+aurais fini

Is this right? Otherwise it doesn't make any sense to me.

 

 

 

 

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I think you've actually answered your own question.

As you rightly say, in French, you would tend to use the future after a future-oriented quand (and indeed, future-oriented subordinate clauses in general: it's not just restricted to quand) when the general time frame of the sentence is the present. And if you think about your sentence, what you would have in this case would strictly be a future perfect, though it's essentially the same phenomenon:

Je promets de te prêter le livre quand j'aurai fini de le lire.

(You could also say: "quand je l'aurai achevé")

So what you're seeing is the same phenomenon shifted into the past. Remember the conditional is usually used as a future-in-the-past. So a future-perfect-in-the-past becomes a conditional perfect.

Thanks for confirming this . I wasn't sure if this was right but now the sentence makes sense to me.

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