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In:Tense, Aspect, Modality, and Evidentiality: Crosslinguistic perspectives
Edited by Dalila Ayoun, Agnès Celle and Laure Lansari
[Studies in Language Companion Series 197] 2018
► pp. 65–82

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Chapter 4
The competition between the present conditional and the prospective imperfect in French over the centuries: First results

 | Praxiling, UMR 5267, Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3
 | Praxiling, UMR 5267, Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3
 | Praxiling, UMR 5267, Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3
Published online: 2 August 2018
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.197.04bre
Abstract
While a significant number of works are known about the competition over the centuries between the synthetic future and the periphrastic prospective present, the parallel competition between the present conditional and the periphrastic construction with the prospective imperfect has received less attention. We focus here on the latter competition, limiting our study of the two forms to their temporal uses in discourse. We describe the uses for each form according to their order of appearance: imminence, subjective ulteriority and objective ulteriority. The two forms compete with each other in the expression of both subjective and objective ulteriority. We give an assessment of the diachronic evolution of the ratio present conditional / prospective imperfect in the expression of subjective ulteriority.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2. Uses in discourse of the present conditional and the prospective imperfect
    • 2.1The present conditional
      • 2.1.1Stage (a) – subjective ulteriority
      • 2.1.2 Stage (b) – objective ulteriority
    • 2.2The prospective imperfect
      • 2.2.1Stage (a) – movement
      • 2.2.2Stage (b) – imminence
      • 2.2.3 Stage (c) – subjective ulteriority
      • 2.2.4Stage (d) – objective ulteriority
  • 3.An experiment with a multi-genre diachronic corpus of annotated texts
  • 4.Evolution of the competition between conditional and prospective
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Corpus
  • References
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2022. L’Amour s’en va périe  : de la périphrase « auxiliaire s’en aller  + Verbe au participe passé » en français pré-classique. Langue française N° 213:1 ► pp. 23 ff. DOI logo

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