SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE EXPRESSION OF TEMPORAL RELATIONS IN FUTURE-TIME RELATIVE CLAUSES

This paper deals with the question whether the syntactic difference be tween restrictive relative clauses (RRC) and nonrestrictive relative c lauses (NRRC) results in different tense systems determining the choic e of verb forms to indicate future time. It is shown that future-time NRRCs only allow the use of absolute tenses to express temporal relati ons, whereas in RRCs, relative tenses can be used as well. However, th ere are a number of constraints on the use of relative tenses even in RRCs, a phenomenon that has escaped most linguists' attention. In this paper, a survey is made of factors that determine whether or not it i s possible to use relative tenses to refer to future-time situations i n RRCs.