The competition between present conditional and prospective imperfect in French over the centuries

Jacques Bres (1) , Sascha Diwersy (1) , Giancarlo Luxardo (1)

1 Praxiling - Praxiling

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.

Mots clés: prospective; subjective ulteriority; objective ulteriority; grammaticalization

Domaines: Linguistique

Jacques Bres, Sascha Diwersy, Giancarlo Luxardo. The competition between present conditional and prospective imperfect in French over the centuries. Dalila Ayoun, Agnès Celle, Laure Lansari. Tense, Aspect, Modality and Evidentiality: Cross-linguistic perspectives, 197, John Benjamins, pp.65-82, 2018, Studies in Language Companion Series, 9789027200969. ⟨hal-01828414⟩