The narrative construction va + infinitive in Contemporary French: A linguistic phoenix rising from its medieval ashes?: a linguistic phoenix rising from its medieval ashes?
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Jacques Bres [2] ; Emmanuelle Labeau [1]
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[1] Aston University
Aston University
Reino Unido
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[2] CNRS-Montpellier III
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- Localización: Diachronica: International Journal for Historical Linguistics = Revue Internationale pour la Linguistique Historique = Internationale Zeitschrift für Historische Sprachwissenschaft, ISSN 0176-4225, Vol. 30, Nº 3, 2013, págs. 295-322
- Idioma: inglés
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Resumen
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.
