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Article published In: Revue Romane
Vol. 56:2 (2021) ► pp.267–296

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Articles linguistiques

The Pluperfect and its discourse potential in contrast

A comparison between Spanish, French and Italian

 | University of Cologne
Published online: 6 May 2020
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/rro.20008.pro
Abstract
This paper intends to compare the functions of the Pluperfect in discourse from a comparative perspective, taking into account the use of this particular tense form in three different Romance languages, namely French, Italian and Spanish. In particular, it tries to elucidate in what way the Pluperfect contributes to the building and structuring of discourse segments or, to put it differently, how it helps to create coherent units of discourse and interacts with other units on a more comprehensive structural level. The analysis also focuses on the interplay of the Pluperfect with competing past tense forms, the perfective Simple Past and the Perfect. The account put forward in this article tries to present a unified analysis by resorting to the tense-in-discourse framework developed by Becker, M. & J. Egetenmeyer. (2018): A prominence-based account of temporal discourse structure. Lingua, 2141, pp. 28–58. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar.
Article outline
  • 1.The Pluperfect – A less considered tense
    • 1.1Introduction
    • 1.2The Pluperfect in the tense literature
  • 2.A tense in discourse framework
  • 3.Pluperfect(s) in Spanish and French
    • 3.1The Pluperfect in Spanish
    • 3.2The Pluperfect in French
    • 3.3Developments in French and differences to Spanish – A contrastive view
  • 4.The discourse potential of the Pluperfect in contemporary Italian narrative prose
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Note
  • References
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Egetenmeyer, Jakob
2024. The The time updating imperfecto in Spanish. Moenia DOI logo
Corre, Éric
2022. Perfective Marking in the Breton Tense-Aspect System. Languages 7:3 ► pp. 188 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2023. The Spanish and the Portuguese Present Perfect in Discourse [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 279], DOI logo

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