The interaction of grammatical categories (as well as that of particular
grammemes) is predominantly studied in the framework of independent utterances. The application of such theories to the dependent predication is hindered by the fact that the blocking of certain meanings of temporal forms is conditioned by a number of various factors.
The theory of neutralisation accounts only for a part of these restrictions. The
enhancement of its concept space with the notion of “contextual supplanting” (V.
Plungian), which has been applied, in a refined form, to Bulgarian subordinate clauses (K. Aleksova), assigns a stronger interpretative force to that theory. There exist, however, other factors that determine temporal restrictions in Bulgarian subordinate clauses.
This paper deals with two of them: 1) “relic” contexts, i. e. those preserving previous states of the language, and 2) da-sentences (including those with da as a part of a compound conjunction). The latter have received numerous descriptions in Bulgarian studies, but from a theoretical point of view there is no clear answer on what mechanisms control the restrictions on the subordinate predicate. The paper analyses some possible clues to that.
The impact of several different factors produces both certain restrictions and a high temporal variance in the Bulgarian subordinate clause. An important task of the researcher is to discriminate influences of various factors leading to similar effects – constraints on certain forms.