Facing the future together: French and English in contrast (original) (raw)
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Diacronia
Deriving from a comprehensive postdoctoral study, this article aims at presenting the evolution of future tense forms in French from the perspective of the re-grammaticalization process, understood as re-organisation of the grammatical system of a language (v. Andersen, 2006; Lindschouw, 2011). In very general lines, this process may be described as follows: in time, canonical future forms, originally representing outcomes of previous ‘grammaticalization’ processes (i.e. transition from lexical to gramatical), eventually show a poly-functional morpho-syntactic and semantic behaviour, actualising more than one grammatical value. Such a situation will imply the selection of new constituents in the canonical future paradigm and will inevitably result in: (i) a competition between canonical forms and the newly created ones; (ii) a de-semantization and specialization of canonical forms in a certain informational segment, and (iii) the (total or partial) grammaticalization of the concurre...
Future time vs. future tense: An introduction
2014
In this paper, we lay bare some of the difficulties and intricacies that often remain implicit in the literature on future tense(s). After outlining some foundational issues concerning the definition of ‘tense’ as distinct from ‘aspect’ and ‘modality’, we examine criteria for deciding if a given language has a future tense. More fundamentally, we consider whether there is justification for the very category of ‘future tense’ as part of the linguist’s descriptive repertoire. To achieve these goals, we review some of the relevant literature from such fields as traditional linguistics, formal semantics and the philosophy of language. We also assess to what extent work in cognitive psychology confirms that referring to future time is in essence different from referring to the past. We conclude by explaining why a book such as Future Times, Future Tenses is timely, and by sketching all the contributions to the volume.
This work aims to show the diverse perspectives, mostly synchronic, when it comes to the factors that come into play to influence the choice of the use of either the synthetic (SF) or the analytic (AF) forms of future (je vous attendrai vs. je vais vous attendre, "I will wait for you" vs. "I am going to wait for you") in certain spoken varieties of North American French (actually restricted to Canadian French in all studies considered here, and in the vast majority of studies carried out in general). Poplack and Turpin argue that speakers rarely select SF or AF in accordance with the values commonly attributed to them in either the descriptive or prescriptive literature because basically all reference to future states or events is made by AF, which "has ousted synthetic future from virtually all contexts of productive usage but one, while futurate present has made only incipient incursions into another" (1999, 135). The proposed underlying reasons for using SF, AF or both in any given situation in all these studies varies, ranging from the discoursive and modal to education level, contact linguistics phenomena, and bilingualism. The varieties of French considered here are: a) Montreal French in Blondeau's (2006) study, b) Three locations (northeast, northwest and southeast) in New Brunswick in Chevalier's (1994) study, c) Three localities (St-Louis and Abram-Village in Prince Edward Island, and L'Anse-à-Canards, in Newfoundland) in King and Nasadi's (2003) study, d) Quebec City French in Laurendau's (2000) and Deshaies and Laforge's studies, and e) Ottawa-Hull French in Poplack and Turpin's (1999) study. According to a summary of characteristics by Poplack and Turpin, AF is related to immediacy or proximity, intentionality, inception, imminence, conviction that the future eventuality will take place, a sense of the unavoidable, speaker involvement in the event, a present state preparatory of the future eventuality, and a psychological link with speech time, present relevance, or prospective aspect. On the other hand, SF signals neutrality, psychological detachment, conjecture, and conveys neither personal involvement nor a posterior link with an event taking place at speech time (1999, 137). This work will try to explore whether these notions hold true. While all reasons for taking into account the aforementioned purely linguistic and sociolinguistic factors should be considered, understanding which are the most influential ones in Canadian French (and in French in general, to a certain, generalized extent) can definitely help establish a clearer characterization pattern for the use of spoken future referentiality in this particular context.
On the role of the present indicative in variable future-time reference in Hexagonal French
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique
This article investigates variable future-time expression among native speakers of Hexagonal French who participated in informal conversations. The quantitative analysis is the first to examine the inflectional future, periphrastic future, and present indicative as separate forms within a single statistical model of French oral production. Results indicate that temporal distance and presence/absence of a temporal expression predict use of these verb forms. The second phase of the analysis focused on the use of the present indicative in future-time contexts. The examination of each instance of the present indicative shows that an immediate lexical temporal indicator is not necessary for this form to convey futurity and that future-time reference is often established at the discourse level and occasionally through apparent shared knowledge between the interlocutors. This investigation suggests the value of including the present indicative in the analysis of future-time reference in He...
Future in Present-day English: Corpus-based evidence on the rivalry of expressions
Icame Journal, 1997
The aim of the present paper is to provide a general, quantitative picture of how some expressions of future are used in three regional varieties of Present-day English, British, American and Indian English. The expressions studied include will/won't+inf., 'll+inf., shall+inf., BE(pres) going to+inf. and gonna+inf. (henceforth 'expressions of future' or FUT). will+inf. History will not remember it.
PRESCRIPTION VS. PRAXIS: THE EVOLUTION OF FUTURE TEMPORAL REFERENCE IN FRENCH
Because many of the forms participating in inherent variability are not attested in the standard language, they are often construed as evidence of change. We test this assumption by confronting the standard, as instantiated by a unique corpus covering five centuries of French grammatical injunctions, with data on the evolution of spontaneous speech over an apparent-time span of 119 years. Reasoning that forms salient enough to have attracted the attention of grammarians were likely widespread in the speech of the time, we demonstrate how these materials may be used to (i) infer the existence of prior variability, (ii) trace the evolution of normative dictates associated with the variants, and most revealing, (iii) discern hints of prior linguistic conditioning of variant selection. These are then operationalized as factors in a multivariate analysis and tested against the facts of usage. The linguistic focus is on future temporal reference, a notoriously variable sector of the grammar in which competing exponents have persisted for centuries. Systematic comparison of grammatical treatments with actual speaker behavior shows virtually no correspondence between the motivations offered in the literature and those constraining actual variant choice. Prescriptive efforts to explain variability, by ascribing to each variant form a dedicated reading or context of use, have had no effect on speech, which is shown to be governed by a powerful set of tacit variable constraints. These in turn are unacknowledged by the grammatical tradition. The result is a great and growing disconnect between the variable rules governing speech and the normative dictates that underlie the notion of the standard. We explore the implications of these findings for the use of grammarians' observations as data for linguistic analysis.*
The grammaticalization of Indo-European Future Tenses A panchronic approach
This text discusses the grammaticalization and synchronic multifunctionality of a selected sample of Indo-European future markers from the perspective of Functional Discourse Grammar (Hengeveld and Mackenzie 2008). It was written as a preparatory study for my PhD dissertation and defended in front of a committee of senior researchers in Linguistics appointed by the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon (FLUL).
Variable expression of the future in Hexagonal French: the role of settledness
According to normative descriptions of French adverbial clauses containing a subordinated verb, the synthetic future (SF) tense is the only option for eventualities unrealized at the moment of utterance (e.g. Quand j'arriverai [SF], je t'appellerai 'When I arrive, I'll call you'). However, naturally-occurring data reveal that both the present indicative (PI) and periphrastic future (PF), which frequently replace the synthetic future in main clauses as well, may also be used in these same future-framed adverbial clauses (e.g. Quand j'arrive [PI], je t'appelle; Quand je vais arriver [PF], je vais t'appeler). I demonstrate that native-speaker choice of the present in future-framed adverbial clauses is conditioned by the speaker's presumption of settledness (Kaufmann 2002, 2005) of the realization of the future eventuality. Presumed settledness is the semantic-pragmatic notion that every future world consistent with what the speaker believes to be the case at speech time is one in which the future eventuality necessarily occurs. I operationalize settledness using stimuli that are maximally distinct in terms of contextual factors related to speaker confidence; cases presumed settled are [+immediate, +certain, +temporally specific], whereas non-settled stimuli are [-immediate,-certain,-temporally specific]. The data come from an online questionnaire completed by native French speakers (N=277) from all 12 mainland regions of France. Participants completed a forced-choice task in which they chose between present, periphrastic future, and synthetic future forms to fill in a blank in both main and subordinate clauses. The task consisted of 8 target items and 20 fillers, each containing a preceding context and a bolded sentence. Data were analyzed using both fixed-effects multinomial and mixed-effects logistic regressions in R. Results show that the present is chosen most in the subordinate clause when the future eventuality is presumed to be settled. Settledness was a significant predictor of tense choice (p<.001) and participants showed a clear preference for tense-matching between main and subordinate clauses. Participant age, sex, level of education, and region of origin were not significant in any model. These results demonstrate the central importance of settledness for tense choice in French, where speakers use the present to express their confidence in the realization of future eventualities. This study thus contributes to the scholarly debate over the best characterization of future expression in French using novel experimental methods.