Given a specific meaning of the past perfect in several utterances, and pragmatic similarities between the same past perfect and the French Plus-que-parfait, the paper suggests comparing this typical meaning with the way the brain activation governing utterance is organized. This enables the reader to consider elements which are not linguistic (that is to say memory, neurobiological and genetic factors…) but which are to be taken into account as regards the production and transmission of language units. Then the question arises as to whether or not the link between the language syntactic structure and the ability of man to perform ballistic movements is relevant.