Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-wzw2p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-07T15:44:46.182Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Variation and change in future temporal reference with avoir and être

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2020

Anna Tristram Open the ORCID record for Anna Tristram [Opens in a new window]
Anna Tristram*
Affiliation:
Queen’s University Belfast
*
Email: a.tristram@qub.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Variation and change in the future temporal reference (FTR) sector in French has been the subject of numerous studies, from a variety of perspectives. Most studies consider the patterns of variation and evidence for change by looking at the verbal system as a whole. However, there are indications that some verbs differ significantly in their preference for one or other variant. Avoir and être are two such verbs. This study first examines the overall distribution of the inflected and periphrastic future with these two verbs in the ESLO corpus of spoken French, and considers the evidence for change. A multivariate analysis of the linguistic factors affecting variant selection in FTR with these two verbs reveals no exceptional effects; we thus explore other possible explanations for the exceptional distribution of FTR variants with these two verbs.

Type
Article
Information
Journal of French Language Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , March 2021 , pp. 25 - 49
Check for updates
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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.)

Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Professor Janice Carruthers and Professor Wendy Ayres-Bennett for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper, as well as audiences at the Association of French Language Studies conference in June 2016 at Queen’s University Belfast and the DIA V conference in September 2018 at the Université Paris Nanterre, and three anonymous reviewers. All remaining errors are of course my own.

References

REFERENCES

Abouda, L. and Skrovec, M. (2015). Du rapport entre formes synthétique et analytique du futur. Étude de la variable modale dans un corpus oral micro-diachronique. Revue de Sémantique et Pragmatique, 38: 35–57.10.4000/rsp.512CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abouda, L. and Skrovec, M. (2017). Alternance futur simple/futur périphrastique : variation et changement en français oral hexagonal. Revue de Sémantique et pragmatique, 41–42(41–42), pp. 155–179.10.4000/rsp.479CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Antonini, A. (1753). Principes de la grammaire françoise, pratique et raisonnée. Paris: Duchesne.Google Scholar
Armstrong, N. (2001). Social and Stylistic Variation in Spoken French: a Comparative Approach. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/impact.8CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ashby, W. (1981). The loss of the negative particle ne in French: a syntactic change in progress. Language, 57: 674–687.10.2307/414345CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beeching, K. (2002). Gender, Politeness and Pragmatic Particles in French. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/pbns.104CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bilger, M. (2001). Retour sur le « futur » dans les corpus du français parlé. Recherches sur le français parlé, 16: 177–188.Google Scholar
Blanche-Benveniste, C. (1977). L’un chasse l’autre, le domaine des auxiliaries. Recherches sur le français parlé, 1: 100–148.Google Scholar
Blanche-Benveniste, C., Bilger, M. and Rouget, C. (1990). Le français parlé: Études grammaticales. Paris: Centre National de Recherches Scientifiques.Google Scholar
Blas Arroyo, J. L. (2008). The variable expression of future tense in Peninsular Spanish: the present (and future) of inflectional forms in the Spanish spoken in a bilingual region. Language Variation and Change, 201: 85–126.10.1017/S095439450800001XCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blondeau, H. (2006). La trajectoire de l’emploi du futur chez une cohorte de Montréalais francophones entre 1971 et 1995. Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique appliquée, 9.2: 73–98.Google Scholar
Blondeau, H. and Labeau, E. (2016). La référence temporelle au futur dans les bulletins météo en France et au Québec : regard variationniste sur l’oral préparé. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique, 61.3: 240–258.Google Scholar
Bres, J. and Labeau, E. (2013). About the illustrative use of the aller + Infinitive periphrasis in French. In: E. Labeau and J. Bres (eds), Evolution in Romance Verbal Systems. Bern: Peter Lang, pp. 171–202.Google Scholar
Bybee, J. (2003). Mechanisms of change in grammaticization: the role of frequency. In: Joseph, B. D. and Janda, R. D. (eds), The Handbook of Historical Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 602–623.10.1002/9780470756393.ch19CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bybee, J. and Thompson, S. (1997). Three frequency effects in syntax. Proceedings of the Twenty-Third Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 23: 378–388.10.3765/bls.v23i1.1293CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cheshire, J. (1987). Syntactic variation, the linguistic variable and sociolinguistic theory. Linguistics, 25: 257–282.10.1515/ling.1987.25.2.257CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Comeau, P. (2015). Vestiges from the grammaticalization path: the expression of future temporal reference in Acadian French. Journal of French Language Studies, 25.3: 339–365.10.1017/S0959269514000301CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Comeau, P., King, R. and LeBlanc, C. L. (2016). The Future’s path in three Acadian French varieties. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 22.2: 21–30.Google Scholar
Comeau, P. and Villeneuve, A.-J. (2016). Future temporal reference in French: An introduction. Canadian Journal of Linguistics, 61.3: 231–239.10.1017/cnj.2016.28CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Confais, J.-P. (1995). Temps mode aspect: Les approches des morphèmes verbaux et leurs problèmes à l’exemple du français et de l’allemand. Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail.Google Scholar
Côté, S. (2018). L’effet de la (ir)régularité verbale sur le choix de variante du futur en français L2. Canadian Modern Language Review, 74.4: 523–547.10.3138/cmlr.2017-0018CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coveney, A. (1996). Variability in Spoken French: A Sociolinguistic Study of Interrogation and Negation. Exeter: Elm Bank.Google Scholar
Coveney, A. (2007). Grammatical variation in French. Nottingham French Studies, 46: 100–118.10.3366/nfs.2007-2.007CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Damourette, J. and Pichon, E. (1911). Des mots à la pensée : essai de grammaire de la langue française. Paris: D’Artrey.Google Scholar
Edmonds, A., Gudmestad, A. and Donaldson, B. (2017). A concept-oriented analysis of future-time reference in native and near-native Hexagonal French. Journal of French Language Studies, 27.3: 381–404.10.1017/S0959269516000259CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Emirkanian, L. and Sankoff, D. (1986). Le Futur simple et le futur périphrastique dans le français parlé. In: Bouvier, J.-C. (ed.), Morphosyntaxe des langues romanes. Actes du XVIIe Cong. Internat. de Ling. and Philol. Romanes, IV (Aix-en-Provence, 29 août-3 sept. 1983). Aix-en-Provence: Université de Provence, pp. 395–407.Google Scholar
Engel, D. M. (1989). Les temps passes de être. Revue Romane, 241: 3–12.Google Scholar
Fleischman, S. (1982). The Future in Thought and Language : Diachronic Evidence from Romance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
François, D. (1974). Français parlé : Analyse des unités phoniques et significatives d’un corpus recueilli dans la région parisienne (2 vols). Paris: Société d’études linguistiques et anthropologiques de France.Google Scholar
Gadet, F. (1997). La variation en syntaxe. Langue Française, 11: 126–132.Google Scholar
García, E. (1985). Shifting variation. Lingua, 67: 189–224.10.1016/S0024-3841(85)90068-3CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gougenheim, G. et al. (1964) L’élaboration du français fondamental (1er degré): Étude sur l’établissement d’un vocabulaire et d’une grammaire de base. Paris: Didier.Google Scholar
Greenberg, J. (1978). Universals of Human Language, Vol. IV: Word Structure. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Grimm, R. D. (2010). A real-time study of future temporal reference in spoken Ontarian French. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 16.2: 16–23.Google Scholar
Grimm, R. and Nadasdi, T. (2011). The Future of Ontario French. Journal of French Language Studies, 21.2: 173–189.10.1017/S0959269510000335CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hansen, A. B. (1994). Etude du E caduc – stabilisation en cours et variations lexicales. Journal of French Language Studies, 4.1: 25–54.10.1017/S0959269500001964CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Imbs, P. (1960). L’Emploi des temps verbaux en francais moderne. Paris: Klincksieck.Google Scholar
Imbs, P. (1968). L’emploi des temps verbaux en français moderne: Essai de grammaire descriptive. Paris: Klincksieck.Google Scholar
Jeanjean, C. (1988). Le Futur simple et le futur périphrastique en français parlé: Étude distributionnelle. In: Blanche-Benveniste, C., Chervel, A. and Gross, M. (eds), Grammaire et histoire de la grammaire. Aix-en-Provence: Université de Provence, pp. 235–257.Google Scholar
Johnson, D. E. (2009). Getting off the GoldVarb standard: introducing Rbrul for mixed-effects variable rule analysis. Linguistics and Language Compass, 3.1: 359–383.10.1111/j.1749-818X.2008.00108.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahn, F. (1954). Le système des temps de l’indicatif chez un Parisien et chez une Bâloise. Geneva: Droz.Google Scholar
King, R. and Nadasdi, T. (2003). Back to the future in Acadian French. Journal of French Language Studies, 13: 323–337.10.1017/S0959269503001157CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labeau, E. (2015). Il était une fois le passé simple…. Journal of French Language Studies, 25.2: 165–187.10.1017/S0959269515000095CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lavandera, B. R. (1978). Where does the sociolinguistic variable stop? Language in Society, 7: 171–182.10.1017/S0047404500005510CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lesage, R. and Gagnon, S. (1992). Futur simple et futur périphrastique dans la presse québécoise. In: Chrochetière, A., Boulanger, J.-C. and Ouellon, C. (eds), Actes du XV Congrès International des Linguistes. Quebec: Presses de L’Université Laval, pp. 367–370.Google Scholar
Lindqvist, C. (1979). L’Emploi temporel dans la complétive au subjonctif introduite par un temps du passé en français contemporain. Uppsala: Acta Universitas Upsaliensis.Google Scholar
Lorenz, B. (1989). Die Konkurrenz zwischen dem futur simple und dem futur périphrastique im gesprochenen Französisch der Gegenwart. Münster: Kleinheinrich.Google Scholar
Poplack, S. (2001).Variability, frequency, and productivity in the irrealis domain of French. In: Bybee, J. and Hopper, P. (eds). Frequency and the Emergence of Linguistic Structure (Typological Studies in Language 45). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 405–428.10.1075/tsl.45.20popCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poplack, S. and Dion, N. (2009). Prescription vs. praxis: The evolution of future temporal reference in French. Language, 85.3: 557–587.10.1353/lan.0.0149CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poplack, S., Lealess, A. and Dion, N. (2013). The evolving grammar of the French subjunctive. Probus: International Journal of Latin and Romance Linguistics, 25.1: 139–195.Google Scholar
Poplack, S. and St-Amand, A. (2007). A real-time window on 19th-century vernacular French: the récits du français québécois d’autrefois. Language in Society, 36.5: 707–734.Google Scholar
Poplack, S. and Tagliamonte, S. (2001). African American English in the Diaspora: Tense and Aspect. Malden: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Poplack, S. and Turpin, D. (1999). Does the futur have a future in (Canadian) French? Probus: International Journal of Latin and Romance Linguistics, 11.1: 133–164.Google Scholar
Roberts, N. S. (2012). Future temporal reference in hexagonal French. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 182: 97–106.Google Scholar
Roberts, N. S. (2016). The future of Martinique French: The role of random effects on the variable expression of futurity. Canadian Journal of Linguistics, 61: 286–313.10.1017/cnj.2016.29CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Romaine, S. (1984). On the problem of syntactic variation and pragmatic meaning in sociolinguistic theory. Folia Linguistica: Acta Societatis Linguisticae Europaeae, 18.3–4: 409–437.Google Scholar
Sankoff, D. (1988). Sociolinguistics and syntactic variation. In: Newmeyer, F. J. (ed.) Linguistics: The Cambridge Survey Vol. 4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 140–161.10.1017/CBO9780511620577.009CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sankoff, G. (1980). Above and beyond phonology in variable rules. In: Sankoff, G. (ed.), The Social Life of Language. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 81–94.10.9783/9781512809589CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Söll, L. (1983). De la concurrence du futur simple et du futur proche en français moderne. In: Hausmann, F.-J. (ed.), Etudes de grammaire française descriptive. Heidelberg: Julius Groos, pp. 16–24.Google Scholar
Sundell, L.-G. (1991). Le temps futur en français moderne. Uppsala: Textgruppen i Uppsala AB.Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, S. (2002). Comparative sociolinguistics. In: Chambers, J. K., Trudgill, P., and Schilling-Estes, N. (eds), Handbook of Language Variation and Change. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 729–763.Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, S. (2012). Variationist Sociolinguistics : Change, Observation, Interpretation. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Tremblay, M., Blondeau, H. and Labeau, E. (2019). Texting the future in Belgium and Québec : present matters. Journal of French Language Studies, 30.1: 73–98.Google Scholar
Tristram, A. (2014). Variation and Change in French Morphosyntax: the Case of Collective Nouns. Cambridge: Legenda.Google Scholar
Vet, C. (1980). Temps, aspects et adverbes de temps en français contemporain: Essai de sémantique formelle. Geneva: Droz.Google Scholar
Villeneuve, A.-J. and Comeau, P. (2016). Breaking down temporal distance in a continental French variety: Future temporal reference in Vimeu. Canadian Journal of Linguistics, 61.3: 314–336.10.1017/cnj.2016.30CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wagner, S. E. and Sankoff, G. (2011). Age grading in the Montréal French inflected future. Language Variation and Change, 23.3: 275–313.10.1017/S0954394511000111CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wales, L. (2014). The case of the invisible postman: the current status of the French future tense. In: Pensalfini, R., Turpin, M. and Guillemin, D. (eds), Language Description Informed by Theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 319–335.10.1075/slcs.147.13walCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wales, M. L. (1983). The semantic distribution of « aller » + infinitive and the future tense in spoken French. General Linguistics, 23.1: 19–28.Google Scholar
Waugh, L. R. and Monville-Burston, M. (1986). Aspect and discourse function: the French simple past in newspaper usage. Language, 62.4: 846–877.10.2307/415174CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weinreich, U., Labov, W. and Herzog, M. I. (1968). Empirical Foundations for a Theory of Language Change. Texas: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Winford, D. (1996) The problem of syntactic variation. In: Arnold, J. and Al, E. (eds), Sociolinguistic Variation: Data, Theory, Analysis. Selected Papers from NWAVE 23. Stanford, CA: CSLI, pp. 177–192.Google Scholar