13.16 When-clauses in the future tense 13.16.1 If the head clause situation and the when-clause situation are to be interpreted as W-simultaneous post-present situations, thewhen-clause
Trang 1672 13 Adverbialwhen-clauses and the use of tenses
clauses no longer refer to time at all but describe the case(s) in which the statement made in the head clause is true:
Children are orphans when their parents are dead
When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life (Samuel Johnson) Atemporal when-clauses like these are sometimes called ‘restrictive when-clauses’ because they restrict the cases in which the head-clause statement is true In the above examples, the idea of a set of cases (to be restricted by the
when-clause) results from the fact that the subject NP is used generically: a
generic NP calls up the idea of an unspecified set, hence of a nonbounded number of entities (individuals) Since it is these entities that constitute the cases restricted by the when-clause, we can replace the when-clause by a
re-strictive relative clause without any apparent difference of meaning:
Children whose parents are dead are orphans
A man who is tired of London is tired of life
Here too, the generic subject NP calls up the idea of an indefinite (nonbounded) number of entities and hence of an indefinite number of cases (each entity being associated with one case) Whereas in the first pair of examples the atemporalwhen-clauses restrict the number of cases, and hence of entities, for
which the head-clause statement is true, the relative clauses in the second pair
of examples restrict the number of entities, and hence the number of cases, for which the head-clause statement is true The result is that the when-clauses
have much the same effect as the relative clauses
13.12.5 Let us note, finally, that a pseudo-sloppy simultaneity reading of
when requires that there should be some kind of logical relation (e g cause
and effect) between the when-clause and the head clause This explains why
sentences like the following are odd:
?When my car broke down, there was a woman shot in Boston
The restriction has to do with the Gricean Maxim of Relation (Relevance) The use of when (in configuration 1) means that the speaker locates the situation
time of the when-clause and the situation time of the head clause within a
common Adv-time Obviously, the speaker must have some reason for doing this In the unmarked case, the reason is that the two situation times are W-simultaneous If this is not the case, the reason is that the speaker wants to express some kind of logical relation between the two situation times
Trang 2VI The expression of irrealis or tentativeness in
when-clauses
Under certain conditions, an adverbial when-clause can use the conditional perfect to
represents its contents as ‘irrealis’, i e as counterfactual (unreal) or tentative
13.13 Counterfactual when-clauses
In independent clauses it is possible to use the conditional perfect to refer to a
counterfactualpast situation, usually in a context referring to, or implying,
an unfulfilled condition:
I would have welcomed more information on what they wanted us to do [if that
had been possible]
This use of the conditional perfect is also possible in when-clauses:
Maddeningly, just when I would have welcomed full information on the books he
was reading, he started to mention nothing beyond authors and titles, often in a
shortened form (GREEM)
[“It is very kind of you to have asked me.”] And then, when he would have rung
off, she said, [“I suppose you have changed the flat a lot?”] (LOB)
[Ten years ago, the newspaper El Espectador ( ) began warning of the rise of the
drug mafias ( )] Then, when itwould have been easier to resist them, nothing was
done (WSJ)
Sentences like these would appear to run counter to the widespread belief that
when-clauses differ from if-clauses in that they are presupposed to be factual.
The truth is that adverbialclauses presuppose actualization of the
when-clause situation in some possible world, but not necessarily in the actual world
(Thewhen-clause and the head clause must, however, always refer to the same
possible world.) Sometimes the world in question involves situations which at
some time or other are expected to actualize later This is the case in sentences
like the following:
John said he would commit suicide when a nuclear war broke out
The speaker here refers to a world of expectation (existing in John’s mind) in
which the when-clause situation actualizes He does not say anything about
actualization of the when-clause situation in the real world The first three
examples differ from this in that instead of just voicing the subject’s
expecta-tion, the speaker states explicitly (through the use of a counterfactual verb
Trang 3674 13 Adverbialwhen-clauses and the use of tenses
form) that the anticipated when-clause situation did not actualize in the real
world
If thewhen-clause uses the conditional perfect, as in the first three examples,
it refers to a counterfactual world Like any other temporalwhen-clause, such
a when-clause establishes an Adv-time, but the time indicated is now not a
time of actualization but a time of nonactualization
There is a similar use of the conditional tense, which can refer to the future and convey a counterfactual meaning, provided the verb is stative or pro-gressive:
Make sure you don’t pay for holidays that occur when an employee would not
otherwisebe working (BR) (⫽ ‘… when an employee would not be working if he were not on holiday’)
13.14 Tentative when-clauses
Time-specifying when-clauses can also use a verb form which represents the
actualization of the when-clause situation as ‘tentative’, i e as unlikely but not impossible This is typically the case inclauses introduced by when-ever and using should:
I have promised to stand in for him whenever his state of health should render it
impossible for him to attend the monthly meeting of the Board
This decided him to part with the boy, whenever heshould be found (GLME)
In examples like these, which sound rather archaic, the when-clause has a
conditional connotation
Trang 4VII Adverbial when-clauses using an absolute
tense form
In the preceding sections we have discussed the nine configurations which can
be considered as constituting the unmarked uses of relative tenses in
when-clauses, as well as a couple of marked relative tense uses (viz indirect binding
and irrealis) In this section we will have a brief look at a number of marked
cases in which the tense form of thewhen-clause is arguably an absolute tense
form, i e a tense form which relates the situation time of the when-clause
directly to t0
13.15 The Special Present Time-sphere System
Situations that actualized in the past are normally described with the help of
one of the past time-sphere tenses (viz the past tense, the past perfect, the
conditional tense or the conditional perfect) However, there are contexts in
which the speaker conventionally uses the Special Present Time-sphere
Sys-tem(see 3.2⫺9), i e the present tense, the present perfect, the future tense or
the future perfect It is typical of this use that the contained orientation time
of thewhen-clause is represented as if it were t0 This means that the situation
time of the when-clause is related to t0, hence that the when-clause uses an
absolute tense For example:
(summary) When they arrive at his house, John is already in bed.
(historic present) When Gordon has shut the door, Joan starts crying.
13.16 When-clauses in the future tense
13.16.1 If the head clause situation and the when-clause situation are to be
interpreted as W-simultaneous post-present situations, thewhen-clause must as
a rule use the present tense (as ‘Pseudo-t0-System’ (see 10.2.1) tense expressing
T-simultaneity) rather than the absolute future tense Still, in very formal or
archaic texts, examples can be found in which the when-clause uses the
fu-ture tense:
‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Except when itshall come to pass that thy trade-routes shall
be endangered (NICH)
13.16.2 Another exception to the rule that adverbialwhen-clauses do not use
the absolute future tense is when thewhen-clause contains or implies a
condi-tion:
Trang 5676 13 Adverbialwhen-clauses and the use of tenses
I think we have a right to use chemical weapons when doing so will help to save
lives
[He is one of those who think that] the US should use their atom bombs “whenever
itwill defend freedom or saves lives”.
In the first of these examples, the when-clause is interpreted as ‘when it will
help to save lives if we do so’ There is a similar implicit condition in the second example The use of the future tense in such when-clauses reminds us
of the rule (discussed in 10.7.1) that conditional clauses that refer to the post-present and which contain or imply another clause expressing an open condi-tion use the future tense (Absolute Future System) rather than the present tense (Pseudo-t0-System):
This system of subsidies will be maintained if the farmers will suffer considerable
losses if it is abolished
We will not use these abbreviations if itwill result in confusion (if we use them).
Pragmatically, the latter sentence is interpreted as ‘We will not use these abbre-viations if we are sure that using them will result in confusion’ In the same
way,We have a right to use chemical weapons when doing so will help to save lives is pragmatically interpreted as ‘We have a right to use chemical weapons when we are sure that using them will result in confusion’.
13.17 Habitual-repetitive sentences
13.17.1 An adverbialwhen-clause uses an absolute tense form if the sentence
receives a habitual-repetitive interpretation:
He is never at home when Ineed him.
Why is water sprayed on orange trees when the temperature is going to drop to
freezing? (www) She always rubs her eyes when shehas just woken up, and stretches, and has her
eyes shut tight and makes funny grimaces (www)
As noted before, ahabitis a characteristic that exists over an extended period
of time In most cases a habit implies repetition: the characteristic in question
is ascribed to the referent of the subject NP on the basis of the fact that there have been a number of instances Such a habit can therefore be seen as a complex situation consisting of an unspecified number of subsituations If the individual subsituations can be described in terms of a head clause and a
when-clause, as in the above examples (where each subsituation is made up of a head clause situation and awhen-clause situation, whose situation times are related
to each other via a common Adv-time), then the complex situation as a whole
Trang 6will be described in exactly the same terms Which tense forms are used in
doing this depends (a) on the time at which the habit is located, (b) on the
relation between the situation time of the head clause and the contained
orien-tation time of the head clause and (c) on the relation between the situation
time of thewhen-clause and the contained orientation time of the when-clause.
In the above examples the habit is said to hold at t0 (although none of the
subsituations (instances) making up the habit need actually take place at t0)
The present tense in the head clause is therefore an absolute tense, and so is the
present tense in thewhen-clause, which also locates the habitual hypersituation
consisting of instances of thewhen-clause situation at t0
13.17.2 Instead of locating the habit at t0, we can also locate it in the
pre-present In that case the head clause uses the present perfect, while the
when-clause can use either the past tense or the present perfect:
I have often been to Japan when the cherry treeswere in bloom.
Payouts have sometimes risen most sharply when priceswere already on their way
down from cyclical peaks (WSJ)
John has batted well when hehas played (HORN)
I’ve spent hours looking at things like this, when you’ve not been around (PIN)
Whereas the past tense in thewhen-clauses of the first two examples is a
rela-tive past tense expressing T-simultaneity (see 9.9.1), the present perfect in the
when-clauses of the latter two examples is an absolute tense form (see 9.9.6).
In the latter sentences, the tense forms of both the head clause and the
when-clause locate their situation times in the pre-present independently of one
an-other, but the two situation times are interpreted as W-simultaneous This kind
of construction requires that both the head clause situation and the
when-clause situation consist of an unspecified number of subsituations The use of
when means that each of the head-clause subsituations is interpreted as
W-simultaneous with one of thewhen-clause subsituations In this way the
over-all situations are also interpreted as W-simultaneous with each other, but this
relation is not expressed by the tense forms The tense forms of the two clauses
relate the two over-all situations directly to t0
13.17.3 When thewhen-clause uses the present perfect, the head clause
occa-sionally uses the past tense:
When wehave suggested changes, the people concerned were furious.
When I have seen him in the last two years, he was invariably accompanied by
several girls
When stocks have been added to the S&P 500 in the past, a flurry of buy orders
oftenforced the exchanges to halt trading because of an imbalance (WSJ)
In the past when I have seen anomalies like that, theywere caused by conditions at
the test site (www)
Trang 7678 13 Adverbialwhen-clauses and the use of tenses
This combination of a present perfect in thewhen-clause with a past tense in
the head clause is only possible if the when-clause precedes the head clause.
This is because the first clause introduces a (repetitive) situation as discourse topic while the second focuses on one aspect of that situation This mechanism
is the same as we have observed in connection with sentences likeI have tried using sleeping pills, but they didn’t work in 6.2.1, where the present perfect
clause also has to precede the clause in the past tense This restriction is also observed in sentences involving a restrictive relative clause and a head clause: here too the subclause may use the present perfect if it precedes the head clause
in the past tense:
Everything Ihave ever done was wrong.
The one time that Ihave ever been in Paris I stayed at a dilapidated hotel.
In all the above sentences, the present perfect in the when-clause or relative
clause is clearly an absolute tense form The status of the past tense in the head clause is not so clear One could argue that this is a relative past tense, repre-senting the situation time of the head clause as T-simultaneous with the situa-tion time of thewhen-clause Conversely, it might be argued that the past tense
form is an absolute tense form (which relates the situation time of the head clause directly to t0) The latter analysis would imply that the fact that the two situation times are interpreted as W-simultaneous is not due to the tense forms but to the presence of when or to contextual and pragmatic factors.
It should be noted, finally, that when the situation time of the when-clause
is repetitive, in which case we normally use whenever or every time (that)
rather than when, sentences with a present perfect in both when-clause and
head clause are often, but need not always be of the type illustrated by the first four examples in this subsection In those examples, each of the subsituations making up the habit which is located in the pre-present is an instance of config-uration 1 (in which the situation time of the when-clause is represented as
T-simultaneous with the contained orientation time of the when-clause)
How-ever, when the present perfect is used in both clauses, each of the subsituations may also be an instance of configuration 4 (with the situation time of the head clause represented as T-anterior to the contained orientation time of the head clause):
Until now, whenever he’s come here he’s just had a quarrel with his wife.
It follows that a sentence like the following is ambiguous, because each instance
of Bill’s being in prison may be interpreted either as coinciding with or as preceding the relevant instance of the speaker seeing Bill (see also 9.9.11): Whenever I’ve seen Bill he’s been in prison