1887
Volume 30, Issue 3
  • ISSN 0176-4225
  • E-ISSN: 1569-9714
USD
Buy:$35.00 + Taxes

Abstract

In Old and Middle French (12th–16th centuries), va [“goes”] + inf was used in narrations in the past. A similar usage seems to have reappeared and be spreading today. However, the old construction combined with past tenses whereas the new one is found only with forms anchored in present and future. We argue that the contemporary construction derives not from the old one, but from a metanarrative construction. On the basis of its future interpretation, va + inf aids the organization of the narration, announcing subsequent events through a hypernymic process. The periphrasis thus approaches a narrative value by projecting the time of events onto that of narration. With the disappearance of all deictic markers, the go-periphrases are no longer hypernyms: they appear on the same temporal line of events as the neighboring situations and are understood as fully completed.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/dia.30.3.01bre
2013-01-01
2025-02-17
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/dia.30.3.01bre
Loading

Supplements

Appendix

  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): Contemporary French; future; grammaticalization; narration; Old French; va + infinitive
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was successful
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error