Is "Futuro do pretérito" ever actually used for the "future in the past" literally, or just for conditional structures?

Question

Is the Portuguese "Futuro do pretérito" ever actually used for the "future in the past" literally, or in modern Portuguese is it just used for conditional structures?

By analogy, the English word "would" is today mainly used for the conditional mood in English, however you can see by looking at it that it comes from the past of "will". This meaning of "future in the past" is still visible in structures like reported speech, such as "He told me he would come".

This can also be formed periphrastically with "to be going" as in "He told me he was going to come", and indeed, for most uses of "future in the past", we use the periphrastic form.

Portuguese has almost exactly the same phenomenon (peculiar, since English isn't a Romance language). Except that whereas English has a modal and a "go" periphrasis Portuguese has an inflected and a "go" periphrasis.

So you have, loosely speaking (usages are different in other situations, but for the sake of analogy):

Eu jogarei     =   I will play
Eu jogaria     =   I would play
Eu vou jogar =   I am going to play
Eu ia jogar    =   I was going to play

My question is this: while I am very familiar with the use of jogaria in conditional structures (in fact, I believe in Portugal you don't call it the futuro do pretérito but the condicional), are there any uses of this conjugation to mean an actual future of the past in the sense of "He told me he would be here" or "I knew that you would do well". I know I can say Ele falou que ia estar aqui and Eu sabia que você ia mandar bem but can I say this, or something like this, using the pretérito perfeito forms?

I'm interested in any dialect of portuguese, thanks in advance

Answer 1

Yes, the futuro do pretérito is also used meaning "future of the past". Some examples:

Bolsas foram deixadas nos estabelecimentos, como garantia de que mulher voltaria. [A Gazeta]

Ele me disse que viria de vez em quando e me ajudaria com o dinheiro da ração. [Folha]

[...] e ela me disse que viria com uma saia de vinil. [Chic]

And this usage is also mentioned in the Wiktionary (emphasis added):

futuro do pretérito m (uncountable)

(grammar, chiefly Brazil) a Portuguese verb form used to express the conditional tense, futurity from a past perspective or to make polite requests

I'd say that the reason one doesn't encounter this construction too often is a preference for the periphrastic form - a preference which is rather prevalent, at least in pt-br, for instance, also for the pretérito mais-que-perfeito ("tinha tentado" is much more common than "tentara"), and for the future tense ("vou tentar" vs. "tentarei").