Avant que- or Avant de-Clauses

The paper aims at challenging the way in which certain constructions are regularly considered to be ‘presupposition triggers’. More precisely, the study focuses on the temporal clauses introduced by avant que or avant de in French (the equivalent of before in English). It explores arguments for the hypothesis that in some cases, avant que or (much more often) avant de may break away from the domain of presupposition, and play the role of temporal succession connectors between two asserted clauses. Such a construction (designated as the ‘assertive construction’) is related to the ‘quand inverse’ (“inverse when”) construction, both requiring a postposed temporal clause. The remarkable property associated with quand inverse – creation of a surprise effect – is lacking in the case of the assertive construction with avant que/de: however, it is put in evidence that the later can also give rise to specific semantic effects.