The narrative construction va + infinitive in Contemporary French
A linguistic phoenix rising from its medieval ashes
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20344688 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jacques Bres (CNRS-Montpellier III), Emmanuelle Labeau (0000-0002-0041-8023, Aston University) |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 30 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 295-322 |
| Publication date | 2013-10-31 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Diachronica (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0176-4225 • E-ISSN: 1569-9714 |
| Publisher | John Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL) |
| DOI | 10.1075/dia.30.3.01bre |
| OpenAlex | W2025828710 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 2 |
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
Art · Deixis · Infinitive · Linguistics · Literature · Metanarrative · Narrative · Basque language and culture studies · Computer Science · Historical Linguistics and Language Studies · History · Linguistics and Discourse Analysis · Philosophy
Approche aspectuo-temporelle des temps verbaux de l’indicatif en français
Du passé simple aux futurs compliqués
La contribution des corpus oraux à la description de phénomènes de grammaticalisation. Que nous apprend le CFPB (Corpus de français parlé à Bruxelles) sur les périphrases en aller + infinitif
The diachronic evolution of future tense forms in French from the perspective of the re-grammaticalization theory
Parcursul diacronic al formelor de viitor din limba franceză din prisma teoriei regramatizării
| Citations per year | 0.5 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2016 - 2025 (10) |
| Highly cited | No |