LE PRÉSENT ANAPHORIQUE EN FRANÇAIS
THE ANAPHORIC PRESENT IN FRENCH

Summary/Abstract: This article is dedicated to a specific use of the present tense, which is very recurrent in the Romanian language but can be found in other Romance languages too, such as French. This 13or mis called ‘the anaphoric present’ and is visible in phrases like Ion mi-a spus că eobosit (Ion told me he was tired), being defined by the fact that it can describe a time interval located entirely in the past. In Romanian, this use has been identified only recently (Uricaru 2003) even if its description is not entirely accurate. In this article, after a presentation of the anaphoric present in Romanian, the author focuses on the occurrences of this present form in the indirect discourse in French, as it can be found in fictional texts and political discourses. The presence of this form, which seems to contradict the sequence of tenses, is considered as a general tendency of European languages to use features of the spoken language in the written language.

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