Imparfait to mean a belief about future possibility?

Question

Content warning: Repeated mention of suicide.

---

In the following passage from a novel¹, the narrator is a seven year old boy who has just been separated permanently from his suicidal mother, by Québec's child welfare social service department.

On nous a définitivement séparés. Pour ma sécurité et son équilibre. Cela m’a paru aussi logique que d’interdire la neige en hiver ou la sloche au printemps. Je savais bien, moi, qu’elle ne mourrait jamais et qu’il n’y avait que ses berceuses pour m’apaiser.

DeepL translates the last sentence to:

I knew that she would never die and that only her lullabies could soothe me.

---

My guess (before reading DeepL) was that "Elle ne mourrait jamais" meant something like "my mother never died", or in other words, "my mother's many suicide attempts never succeeded".

DeepL's translation, instead, is saying "Child welfare services overreacted by separating me from my mother, out of fear that my mother would succeed in killing herself; her many suicide attempts never succeeded in the past, and they never would succeed in the future".

1. Did DeepL translate "ne mourrait jamais" as "never would die" because "mourir" is in the imperfect? (If so, this usage of the imperfect to talk about some fact you believe to be true about the future, is a use that I never saw before. Can you give other example sentences of this use of the imperfect?)

2. Is my initial guess (ie that "ne mourrait jamais" means "never did die") possible?

---

^{1. From "La Bête à sa Mère" by David Goudreault, Chapter 1}

Answer 1

The conditional present in the subordinate clause of qu’elle ne mourrait jamais shows the relationship of the imperfect, je savais, to the future postured at the time of the past: the present conditional. Another clue is that elle mourrait is the conditional present and not a past tense (elle *est/était morte ).

I knew she would never die works happens to work the same way in English, where the correspondence of tenses is not as rigid.

Here are some examples that show the contrast of the correspondance des temps from françaisfacile (with my translations).

• la postériorité en employant le conditionnel présent : J'ai su qu'il parlerait de moi. Je sus qu'il parlerait de moi. Je savais qu'il parlerait de moi. (I knew he would talk about me)

• la simultanéité en employant l'imparfait de l'indicatif : Je savais qu'il parlait de moi. Je sus qu'il parlait de moi. (I knew he was talking about me/talked about me)

BDL gives another example showing indirect speech:

• Anne disait souvent qu'elle travaillerait toute sa vie dans cette entreprise. (en discours direct : Anne disait souvent : « Je travaillerai toute ma vie dans cette entreprise. ») (Anne often said she would work her whole life at this company.)

• Hubert avait déjà compris que sa passion n'intéresserait jamais ses collègues de travail. (comme on aurait dans un contexte au présent : Hubert comprend que sa passion n’intéressera jamais ses collègues de travail.) (Hubert already knew/had already known that his passion would never interest his colleagues)