Hostname: page-component-f554764f5-nt87m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-09T02:48:36.614Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A cognitive-pragmatic view of the French epistemic future

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 August 2011

LOUIS DE SAUSSURE  and
PATRICK MORENCY
LOUIS DE SAUSSURE*
Affiliation:
Université de Neuchâtel (Institut des Sciences du Langage et de la Communication)
PATRICK MORENCY*
Affiliation:
Université de Neuchâtel (Institut des Sciences du Langage et de la Communication)
*
Addresses for correspondence: Louis de Saussure, Patrick Morency, Institut des Sciences du Langage et de la Communication, Université de Neuchâtel, Espace Louis-Agassiz 1, 2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected], [email protected]
Addresses for correspondence: Louis de Saussure, Patrick Morency, Institut des Sciences du Langage et de la Communication, Université de Neuchâtel, Espace Louis-Agassiz 1, 2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected], [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this paper, we review the various types of epistemic usages of the (simple and anterior) future tenses in French with the assumption that what actually licenses their occurrence is not a semantic feature such as aspect but pragmatic effects that give relevance to the utterance at the moment of speech. We review the main hypotheses proposed in the relevant literature and conclude that epistemic futures seem to fulfill the function of communicating – through a metarepresentation of a future verification – not only epistemic modality and evidentiality, but also, and perhaps especially, the inference that a particular course of action has to be undertaken from the perspective of a state of affairs that is true in the present.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of French Language Studies , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , July 2012 , pp. 207 - 223
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Bellahsène, L. (2007). L'expression de la conjecture: le cas du futur en français. In: Bouchard, D., Evrard, I. and Etleva, V. (eds), Représentations du sens linguistique. De Boeck: Bruxelles.Google Scholar
Celle, A. (2004). The French future tense and English will as markers of epistemic modality. Languages in Contrast, 5:2: 181–218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chevalier, J.-C., Blanche-Benveniste, C., Arrivé, M. and Peytard, J. (1978). Grammaire Larousse du français contemporain. Paris: Larousse.Google Scholar
Damourette, J. and Pichon, E. (1911–1936). Des mots à la pensée. Essai de grammaire de la langue française. Paris: d'Artrey.Google Scholar
Declerck, R. (1991). Tense in English. Its Structure and Use in Discourse. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Declerck, R. (2006). The interaction between the English tense system and some modal and aspectual concepts. Cahiers de praxématique, 47: 49–73.Google Scholar
Dendale, P. (2001). Le futur conjectural versus devoir épistémique: différences de valeur et de restrictions d'emploi. Le français moderne, 69: 1–20.Google Scholar
Le Querler, N. (1996). Typologie des modalités. Caen: Presses Universitaires de Caen.Google Scholar
Lyons, J. (1977). Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
McArthur, R. P. (1974). Factuality and modality in the future tense. Noûs, 8: 283–288.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McKim, V. R. and Davis, C. C. (1976). Temporal modalities and the future. Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, XVII/2: 233–239.Google Scholar
Martin, R. (1987). Langage et croyances. Bruxelles: Mardaga.Google Scholar
Morency, P. (2010). Enrichissement épistémique du futur. Cahiers Chronos, 21: 197–214.Google Scholar
Nicolle, S. (1997). Conceptual and procedural encoding: Criteria for the identification of linguistically encoded procedural information. In: Groesfema, M. (ed), Proceedings of the University of Hertfordshire Relevance Theory Workshop. Hatfield: Peter Thomas, pp. 47–56.Google Scholar
Palmer, F. R. (2001). Mood and Modality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Papafragou, A. (2006). Epistemic modality and truth-conditions. Lingua, 116: 1688–1702.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reichenbach, H. G. (1980 [1947]). Elements of Symbolic Logic. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Rocci, A. (2000). L'interprétation épistémique du futur en italien et en français: une analyse procédurale. Cahiers de Linguistique Française, 22: 241–274.Google Scholar
Saussure, L. de (2003). Temps et Pertinence. Eléments de pragmatique cognitive du temps. De Boeck-Duculot: Bruxelles.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saussure, L. de and Sthioul, B. (1999). L'imparfait narratif: point de vue (et images du monde). Cahiers de Praxématique, 32: 167–188.Google Scholar
Saussure, L. de and Sthioul, B. (2005). Imparfait et enrichissement pragmatique. Cahiers Chronos, 14: 103–120.Google Scholar
Schrott, A. (1997). Futurität im Franzözischen der Gegenwart. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
Sperber, D. and Wilson, D. (1995). Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell (2nd edition).Google Scholar
Sthioul, B. (1998). Temps verbaux et points de vue. In: Moeschler, J., Jayez, J., Kozlowska, M., Luscher, J.-M., Sthioul, B. and de Saussure, L. (eds.), Le temps des événements. Paris: Kimé, pp. 197–220.Google Scholar
Sthioul, B. (2007). Informations conceptuelle et procédurale: la piste beauzéenne. In: de Saussure, L., Moeschler, J. and Puskas, G. (eds), Information temporelle, procédures et ordre discursif. Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, pp. 105–121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tasmowski, L. and Dendale, P. (1998). Must /will and doit/futur simple as epistemic modal markers. Semantic value and restrictions of use. In: van der Auwera, J. E. (ed.), English as a Human Language. To honour Louis Goossens. Munich: Lincom Europa, pp. 325–336.Google Scholar
Thomson, A. J. and Martinet, A. V. (1996). Practical English Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
van der Auwera, J. (2003). La grammaire de la modalité. In: Jadir, M.. (ed.), Développements récents en grammaire fonctionnelle. Mohammedia: Publications de la Faculté des Lettres de l'Université Hassan II Mohammedia, pp. 109–120.Google Scholar
Vet, C. and Kampers-Manhe, B. (2001). Futur simple et futur du passé: les emplois temporels et modaux. In: Dendale, P. and Tasmowski, L. (eds), Le conditionnel en français. Metz: Recherches linguistiques, 89–104.Google Scholar
Vetters, C. (1995). L'opposition passé simple-imparfait: une question d'aspect ou de structuration textuelle? Michigan: Bell & Howell, UMI Dissertation Services.Google Scholar
Vetters, C. and Skibinksa, E. (1998). Le futur: une question de temps ou de mode? Remarques générales et analyse du ‘présent-futur’ perfectif polonais. In: Borillo, A., Vetters, C. and Vuillaume, M. (eds), Regards sur l'aspect III. Amsterdam: Rodopi, pp. 247–266.Google Scholar
Wilmet, M. (1976). Grammaire critique du français. Louvain-la-Neuve: Duculot.Google Scholar