could someone explain to me how the pluperfect subjunctive becomes a future tense?
does it? to what are you referring?
The perfect subjunctive conjugates like the future perfect (excpet for first person singular).
The pluperfect subjunctive is unique (+isse+personal endings).
if that is what vir means, the perfect subjunctive did not become the future perfect indicative, they merely coincide in form (like the present active infinitive and the imperfect subjunctive stem). The perfect subjunctive can also have a long i in the termination, distinguishing it from the future perfect indicative which has always a short i.
I think that he may have been referring to the pluperfect subjunctive’s ability to represent an event of a time more advanced than that of the leading verb:
Demonstravit, si id fecissent, mvltos interitvros (esse). (This is not a contrafactual conditional sentence. It is a future-less-vivid conditional sentence subordinated by a verb in the perfect.)
He showed that, if they should have done this, many would die.
Oratia Recta: Si id fecerint, mvlti intereant. (Future-less-vivid conditional sentence)
If they should have done this, many should die.
‘Demonstravit’ is furthest in the past.
‘fecissent’ represents an event which takes place after ‘demonstravit’.
‘interitvros (esse)’ is the most chronologically advanced event of the three.
What I do not understand is how a perfect such as demonstravit can be conceived as being further back in time than the pluperfect fecissent. Isn’t pluperfect by nature a tense which expresses an action which happened before another action in the past. I don’t see how fecissent can express future action off of the perfect tense.
Neither do I, Vir. Could you give us some examples?
I was looking at conditions in Allen and Greenough’s grammar and I was confused by this excerpt.
The futurum in praeterito is a tense future relatively to a time absolutely past. It denotes a future act transferred to the point of view of past time, and hence is naturally expressed by a past tense of the Subjunctive: thus dixisset, he would have said= dicturus fuit, he was about to say [but did not]. As that which looks towards the future from some point in the past has a natural limit in present time, such a tense (the imperfect subjunctive) came naturally to be used to express a present condition purely ideal, that is to say, contrary to fact.