French Language

Discuss and learn French: French vocabulary, French grammar, French culture etc.

French Vocab Games app for iPhone/iPad French-English dictionary French grammar French vocab/phrases

For the latest updates, follow @FrenchUpdates on Twitter!

In textbook explanations of tense sequence, there are always examples like:  Je sais qu'il avait raison.  But there are never examples of a present tense verb (like douter) that requires the subjunctive before a past tense verb  that is the subjunctive equivalent of the imperfect.  In other words, something like:  I doubt that he was right (or) I doubt that he was sick when I telephoned him.  Would such sentences require the imperfect subjunctive in literary French, and what would they be in modern spoken French?

 Also, the English pluperfect is always given in examples following a past tense in the main clause, as in:  I doubted that he had already left.  But what about something like:  I doubt that he had already left by 10:00.  What would the French translation of such a sentence be both in modern spoken French and literary French? 

Views: 1716

Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

So in what you might call "classical literary French"-- so the variety of French that you will find used by your classical 19th century authors-- a past subjunctive (imperfect, perfect or pluperfect as the timeframe required) would be used in the subordinate clause. For example:

Je doute qu'il fût malade.

Il fallait qu'elle vînt me voir.

As you're probably aware, over the course of the 20th century (and actually, the process probably started at least at some point around the mid 1800s but the data is clearer during the 1900s), the present subjunctive has gradually ousted the imperfect subjunctive, to the point where the imperfect subjunctive is practically never used in speech and is rare in writing.

This means that today, it is usual to use the present subjunctive where logically you might have expected the imperfect:

Il fallait qu'elle vienne me voir.

Now, where logic demands it-- or possibly to resolve ambiguity-- the perfect subjunctive (but not the pluperfect) is still common. So for example:

Je doute qu'il ait été malade.

However, in "modern spoken French", people don't usually tie themselves in knots over convoluted sentences involving ambiguous subjunctives. Remember that you can always say:

À mon avis, il n'était pas malade quand je l'ai appelé.

You will also find certain cases where the subjunctive is "classically" used that the indicative is actually used instead. So for example, instead of:

Je ne crois pas qu'il fût/ait été malade.

what you may well actually hear is simply:

Je crois pas qu'il était malade.

The above largely applies to the pluperfect/perfect subjunctive. Where the subjunctive is actually used, the perfect subjunctive is in effect a drop-in replacement for the pluperfect in everyday speech. But again, you might actually find that people in practice avoid using the subjunctive in such cases.

P.S. I should also say (and despite my last example) that English-speaking learners tend to over-exaggerate this issue because there is a phenomenon in English whereby "negative polarity" is placed in the main clause where logically it would belong in the subordinate.

So for example, of these sentences:

(a) I don't think he wanted to come.

(b) I think he didn't want to come.

In practice, native English speakers would tend to use sentence (a), even though logically you might argue that what they actually mean is closer to (b): they're stating a definite opinion about the person's non-volition, not stating their lack of (or contradicting) an opinion about that volition.

French speakers, on the other hand, on the whole tend to form sentences of type (b): the 'negative polarity' sits in the subordinate clause, not the main clause.

So some of the fictitious convoluted combinations of verbs with subjunctives that you see in grammar books aimed at English learners don't actually tend to materialise very much in actual everyday use by native French speakers.

RSS

Follow BitterCoffey on Twitter

© 2024   Created by Neil Coffey.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service