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grammaire anglaise > groupe verbal > temps et formes verbales

 

présent

 

 

present perfect (haveauxiliaire + participe passé)

 

 

passé

 

 

past perfect (hadauxiliaire + participe passé)

 

 

 

 

 

Un temps grammatical (tense) ou une forme verbale

- présent, present perfect, prétérit, etc. -

n'est pas toujours un reflet du temps chronologique (time).

 

 

Temps grammatical et temps chronologique

ne sont pas nécessairement "synchrones".

 

 

La "réalité" / le temps chronologique

n'impose pas un temps grammatical à l'énonciateur.

Ce n'est pas parce qu'un fait est passé

que l'on va nécessairement le relater au prétérit

(qui n'est d'ailleurs pas seulement le temps du passé :

voir prétérit hypothétique).

 

 

De même, le présent peut s'utiilser

pour parler du passé ou du futur.

 

 

En utilisant tel temps ou telle forme verbale

à un point de son discours (temps de l'énonciation, du discours),

celui qui parle / écrit relie certes ce qu'il dit

au temps chronologique (passé - présent - futur),

mais il vise aussi un effet bien précis :

 

effet d'annonce,

objectivité,

dramatisation,

manipulation,

prise de conscience, etc.

 

 

 

 

 

- le présent simple

peut rendre compte de faits passés, présents, ou futurs :

 

 

Bill Clinton speaks to the Guardian

Exclusive Guardian interview

 

On Monday we publish an exclusive interview

in which the former president speaks to the Guardian's Alan Rusbridger

and Jonathan Freedland. Clinton speaks candidly about the war in Iraq

and his quest for peace in the Middle East; his friend Tony Blair;

the wife who might one day succeed him into the White House;

and the Monica Lewinsky scandal that nearly brought him down.

    Bill Clinton speaks to the Guardian, G ad, 19.6.2004,
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/clinton/0,14575,1219435,00.html

 

 

 

 

 

The second act opens before dawn tomorrow, 100m miles from Earth,

when Spirit, a US robot rover the size of golf buggy,

hurtles through the thin atmosphere and bounces to a halt

on the parched deserts of Mars, to begin a search for water on the arid planet.

The third act of the drama is revealed later that day

when a European spacecraft called Mars Express

completes a series of huge elliptical swings around the red planet

and settles down to a steady polar orbit

which will allow it to probe the secrets of the Martian air and rock.

But even before it starts to send back valuable data,

Mars Express has a more urgent role:

to make contact with its baby, Beagle 2,

the tiny British lander that it carried for six months

and then pushed gently towards a dusty basin

near the Martian equator just before Christmas.

    To boldly go in search of comets and Mars secrets, G, 3.1.2004,
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/spacedocumentary/story/0,2763,1115284,00.html

 

 

 

 

 

Ex-PM Callaghan dies, aged 92

 

LORD Callaghan of Cardiff, Britain’s longest living prime minister,

died yesterday on the eve of his 93rd birthday

and only 11 days after his wife Audrey passed away.

    Headline and §1, ST, 27.3.2005,
    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1543273,00.html

 

 

 

 

 

Blow Up star David Hemmings dies

Cult British actor has heart attack on film set, aged 62.

    Web frontpage, G, 4.12.2003.   

 

 

 

 

 

Early next year, the industry that once sustained much of the north,

from Yorkshire to Lancashire and the north east,

effectively closes down:

Britain's largest deep mining complex,

the huge Selby coalfield, ends production.

    The end of Selby, O / The Northerner, 26.9.2003,
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/northerner/0,12216,751474,00.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

- par la mécanique de la concordance des temps (CT),

le prétérit peut s'employer pour parler

du futur (1) ou du présent (2 et comics) :

 

House prices rose 2.1% in July to stand 14.3% higher than July last year,

government data showed yesterday.

The annual rise was up from 13.9% in June

but the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister warned

that its figures were based on completions in July

and so were not comparable with the latest Nationwide or Halifax numbers,

which are based on mortgage approvals and point to a slowing market.

The ODPM said the weakening in prices would not show up in its figures

until September completions were available in November.

    14% rise in house prices, G, September 14, 2004,
    http://money.guardian.co.uk/houseprices/story/0,1456,1303963,00.html

 

 

 

 

 

As the home secretary, David Blunkett, announced record police numbers,

the daughters of Marian Bates claimed that while in the past

they had known their local bobby well, nowadays they did not set eyes

on a police officer from one week to the next.

     Bring back our bobby, say gun victim's daughters:
    Family of woman shot dead in jewellery shop reveal husband's pleas for more police patrols
    as they urge Blunkett to do more to stop crime, G, 3.10.2003,
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,2763,1054978,00.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mark Trail        Jack Elrod        Created by Ed Dodd in 1946        6.12.2004
http://www.kingfeatures.com/features/comics/mtrail/about.htm


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

- le prétérit modal / hypothétique

(même forme que le prétérit temporel, sauf pour BE)

s'emploie pour parler de ce qui pourrait avoir lieu (hypothèse) :

 

    If I won the lotto I would carry on working in my current position.

        http://www.jobfood.com/Default.asp?WCI=PollResults&WCU=211,1

 

 

 

 

 

- L'emploi d'un temps , d'une forme verbale ou d'une forme en -ing

n'est pas forcément imposé par le sujet de l'article

ou par la chronologie des faits relatés.

 

Il peut relever d'un choix stylistique / discursif

(voir aussi formes en be + -ing) :

 

 

TWO sentences into Iain Duncan Smith's speech

and the woman sitting next to me in the Winter Gardens Ballroom Bar

tries to start a plot.

"If we all write in to Conservative Central Office,

they will have to get rid of him," she whispers.

Here, just a few yards from the conference hall

where delegates are cheering IDS to the rafters,

some 200 Tory members,

including chairmen and women of local associations,

are watching him on a huge television screen

with stone-faced expressions and folded arms.

The party plotter, who is a veteran party activist,

explained the reason for the stark disparity :

"This is the real opinion.

Everyone in there is desperate to try and make it work.

I've never seen an audience work so hard.

The reaction in here is closer to the one outside."

This is a tale of two speeches.

The speech taking place inside the hall

where delegates have been whipped into a near-hysterical frenzy,

and the speech being relayed to un-whipped-up Tories in the room next door.

When Mr Duncan Smith complains that Tony Blair will not do

the decent thing and resign, a woman member complains: "Neither will you."

When the Tory leader accuses Mr Blair of being "good on telly",

a phalanx of middle-aged Tory men in the front three row

roar loudly and shout: "Yes!"

When the camera pans to Michael Howard, a group of Tories mutter: "There he is."

The lady plotter remarks: "The bookies in Blackpool are offering odds

on him being the next Prime Minister, you know."

    'Double-dealing, deceitful, incompetent, shallow,
    inefficient, ineffective, corrupt, mendacious, fraudulent, shameful, lying Government...' :
    Is this enough to save him?, T, p. 1, 10.11.2003.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

autres énoncés au

présent / present perfect

prétérit / past perfect

 

 

 

 

A woman of 94 has been released from Broadmoor high-security hospital after being kept there for 40 years, it is disclosed today.

By the end of her detention, the woman was so frail that she was capable of very little movement. She is now in a care facility with no security provision.

The case is being highlighted by the government's Mental Health Act Commission to show the continuing problem of people held inappropriately in the high-security hospitals at Broadmoor in Berkshire, Rampton in Nottinghamshire and Ashworth on Merseyside.

The commission says that two other recent discharges from the hospitals have been a teenager who uses a wheelchair and a blind patient with severely restricted mobility.

It costs about £2,300 a week to keep a patient in a high-security hospital. Yet an official report three years ago estimated that as many as one in three of the hospitals' 1,600 patients did not need such a level of security and called for their transfer to other facilities.

    Broadmoor lets out woman, 94, after 40 years:
   
Commission criticises media exposure of mentally ill, G, 10.12.2003,
    http://society.guardian.co.uk/mentalhealth/story/0,8150,1103571,00.html

 

 

 

 

 

X, a Buenos Aires-based fund manager,

woke up with a start when she felt a hand clamped over her mouth.

As she looked up, the man standing over her took out a gun

and pressed the warm metal barrel against her head.

"I was nine months pregnant and he said to me:

'Don't even dream of going into labour now'," she recalls.

Two other men forced Ms X' two young daughters into the room

and made them all huddle under the sheets

while they plundered the house

The ordeal, which happened at Ms X' home

in a wealthy suburb six months ago, lasted just over an hour.

But it haunts her to this day: "Things like that leave a scar for life."

    Argentina's traumatic lurch into high crime, FT, p.4, 4.6.2003.

 

 

 

 

 

For months, the citizens of Baghdad have known

that this moment would arrive; now it is upon them.

Diplomacy died yesterday.

President Bush delivered his final ultimatum.

Baghdad is now the bulls-eye

for the deadliest weapons mankind has created.

    Iraquis pack up their homes and head for the café, T, p.1, 18.3.2003.

 

Schéma :

Bilan jusqu'au présent de l'énonciation : present perfect (have known)

    Constat / information : présent (is)

        Rappel d'un fait révolu : prétérit (died)

            Rappel d'un 2e fait révolu -> concordance des temps -> prétérit (delivered)

                Constat / information : présent (is)

                    Information-bilan : (has created)

 

 

 

 

 

Chris McGreal,

who has reported for the Guardian for the past 10 years from Africa,

last night won the coveted James Cameron award.

    GE2, Award for Guardian reporter, p. 1, 26.11.2002.

 

 

 

 

 

One of the seven Israeli troops killed

[ sous-entendu : who were killed ]

by a Palestinian sniper at a West Bank roadblock on Saturday

had considered joining the reservists who have refused

to serve in the occupied territories, it emerged yesterday.

    G, War weary troops draw line in sand, p. 4, 6.3.2002.

 

Traduction explicative :

L’un des sept soldats israéliens [qui ont été] tués samedi

par un tireur embusqué palestinien à un barrage en Cisjordanie

avait envisagé de rejoindre ces réservistes

qui refusent de servir dans les territoires occupés, a-t-on appris hier.

 

 

Schéma :

 

Prétérit + marqueur de temps passé (on Saturday)

 

    Past perfect (antériorité par rapport au prétérit)

 

        Present perfect (relation Sujet / Prédicat toujours valide -> trad. présent

 

            Prétérit : l’information date d’hier.

 

 

 

 

 

Over the years, St Enda’s has been subjected to a catalogue of bombings,

shootings and arson attacks, earning it the unenviable reputation

as the most terrorised sports club in Northern Ireland.

In 1972, a workman was killed by a booby-trap device left in a flask

on a path the players used as a short cut.

The same year, an explosion ripped through the clubrooms, and again in 1973.

The following year, 50 players and officials escaped injury

when a player flopped down on a sofa in the changing rooms

and a bomb rolled out but failed to detonate.

Arsonists struck in 1983, 1986, 1992 and twice in 1993.

    Pitch battle, GE2, p. 14, 22.8.2002.

 

         Schéma :

             Present perfect : bilan d'une longue période.

                  Prétérit : bilan détaillé sous forme de récit / chronologie.

 

 

 

 

 

Men are on the moon. At 3:39 am this morning - nearly four hours ahead of schedule - Armstrong, the lunar module commander, opened the hatch and clambered slowly down to the surface of the moon. Minutes later Aldrin followed him down the steps of the ladder - already renamed Tranquility Base - to join in this moving, clumsy culmination of eight years of intense dedication. It was the fulfilment of a dream which men have shared since the beginning of recorded history.

The decision to walk early was made three hours after the lunar module Eagle had made a perfect landing at 9:17 pm, four miles downrange from the chosen site. The spacecraft was steered manually to clear a boulder-strewn crater "the size of a football pitch." It was a moment of extraordinary tension and silence.

    The Moonwalkers, G, 21.7.1969,
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/fromthearchive/story/0,12269,1002715,00.html

 

 

 

 

 

When the satellite transmitter showed

that AC-8 had not moved for one day, then two,

Mark Hall knew something was wrong.

Condors, like AC-8, tend to fly.

On the third day, Mr. Hall,

who manages the Hopper Mountain National Wildlife Refuge

near this Southern California town,

went to investigate and found the body of AC-8,

a female condor with a 10-foot wingspan,

in the branches of an oak tree on a ranch about a 45-minute drive north of here.

She had been shot to death.

    A Most Valuable Condor Is Shot to Death, NYT / Le Monde, p. 5, 4/5.5.2003.

 

 

 

 

 

On New Year's Day 1985,

Ernie Wise made Britain's first cellphone call.

Now, less than two decades later,

most people in this country have a mobile

and every sixth person in the world owns one.

They have launched revolutions, saved lives, destroyed relationships,

and, of course, spawned a whole new genre of utterly pointless communication.

James Meek looks at how the mobile phone has changed our world

    Sub headline, GE2, p. 2, 11.11.2002.

 

 

 

 

 

Hubbard denies manslaughter.

In interviews, he told police

he had used the bolt gun too often to lark around with them.

« They are not toys, » he had said.

Sheep culler ‘killed colleague with bolt gun’, GE, p. 5, 6.3.2002.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Voir aussi / Related

 

Past perfect > have auxiliaire

 

Prétérit modal > it's time + Nsujet + prétérit modal

 

 

 

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