The semantics of the "future in the past" in italian

Abstract

The ‘future in the past’ is a structure of the Italian language with which Brazilian learners seem to present learning difficulties. One can say, then, that it is a complex structure for them. In an attempt to better understand the relations of meaning that are established for the formation of the ‘future in the past’ of the Italian language and to illustrate such relations for Brazilian learners, we propose this article, which is divided into three parts: the first part, which aims at contextualizing the research, deals with relations that are established between the moments of the event, of the enunciation and of reference; the second part deals specifically with the ways in which it is possible to express the ‘future in the past’; and the third and last part seeks to illustrate the semantic relations for the construction of such structure. The conclusion we reached is that the ‘future in the past’ presents peculiarities in relation to Portuguese and understanding the semantic relations that are established for its elaboration can facilitate its learning.