L'IMPARFAIT, UN TEMPS INCONSÉQUENT

The goal of this paper is to provide a unified account of the different interpretations of the French imparfait. Capitalizing on the idea put forth in Caudal & Roussarie (2002a) that tenses should be viewed as illocutionary functions (‘illocutionary viewpoints’) because their aspectual, temporal...

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Published in:Langue française 2003-05 (138), p.61-74
Main Authors: Caudal, Patrick, Vetters, Carl, Roussarie, Laurent
Format: Article
Language:fre
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:The goal of this paper is to provide a unified account of the different interpretations of the French imparfait. Capitalizing on the idea put forth in Caudal & Roussarie (2002a) that tenses should be viewed as illocutionary functions (‘illocutionary viewpoints’) because their aspectual, temporal and modal content reflect the speaker's attitude towards some propositional content, we will ascribe the imparfait a largely underspecified illocutionary force. In particular, we argue that the imparfail is not intrinsically related to assertion, as opposed to the passé simple. We show that such a move makes it possible to account for the entire range of interpretative effects associated with this tense.
ISSN:0023-8368
1957-7982