The French conditional vs WOULD + Verb - and how to translate it into English

Jean-Marie Merle (1)

1 Université de Provence - Département d'études du monde anglophone

This study is a comparison between the French conditional and WOULD + Verb. It is based on the assumption that no grammatical markers are meaningless (no grammatical markers are dummies). The English form WOULD + Verb is usually described as the closest equivalent of the French conditional. The problem is that the modal verb would cannot be used blindly to translate the French conditional. This paper provides an analysis of the various problems posed by the characteristics of the French conditional.

Le problème de traduction vient de l'analogie que l'on est tenté d'établir entre conditionnel et would +BV, cette forme convenant pour traduire le conditionnel dans ses deux emplois considérés comme dominants : prédiction indirecte accompagnée d'une dépendance toncale (il m'a dit qu'il viendrait) ou apodose accompagnée d'une dépendance toncale (si j'étais à votre place, je ferais réparer cette marche au plus vite) ; - les divergences entre les deux formes sont de trois ordres : 1) morpho-syntaxique ; 2) sémantique ; 3) énonciatif.

Mots clés: referentially circumstantial elements; syntax; sémantics; without; potential; virtualis; irrealis; relative clauses; tentative use; prediction; alteration; alterity; the possible; apodosis; protasis; French Conditional; tense; mode; morphology; WILL; WOULD; origins; future; the French imparfait; translation; hypothesis

Mots clés: imparfait; futur; origines; morphologie; Conditionnel; temps; traduction; systèmes hypothétiques; protase; apodose; possible; altérité; circonstants; syntaxe; sémantique; sans; potentiel; irréel; relatives chimériques; atténuation

Domaines: Linguistique

Jean-Marie Merle. The French conditional vs WOULD + Verb - and how to translate it into English. Enunciative - cognitive linguistics workshop, Aug 2000, Berkeley, United States. ⟨hal-00670010⟩