TOWARDS A FORMAL DESCRIPTION OF THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SOME TENSES IN FRENCH AND ENGLISH

In this paper we compare the passe compose, the imperfect and the pass simple in French with their presumable equivalents in English: the Present Perfect, the Past Progressive and the Past Simple tense. We show that the proper explanation of the similarities and differences in the usage of these tenses has to he based on three parameters: aspectual instruction of the tense, aspectual constraints it imposes on the ontological nature of the predicates it is combined with, and the relation between the reference point and event point.