The decline of the French passé simple:

Introduction -- Language evolution -- Once upon a time ... there was the PS -- Favourable factors for PS use in contemporary French -- The not so simple PS -- Substitutes for PS in contemporary French -- Methodology for the corpus analysis -- The PS across modes in contemporary French -- The PS in m...

Ausführliche Beschreibung

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Bibliographische Detailangaben
1. Verfasser: Labeau, Emmanuelle 1968- (VerfasserIn)
Format: Buch
Sprache:English
Veröffentlicht: Leiden ; Boston Brill 2022
Schriftenreihe:Empirical approaches to linguistic theory volume 18
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Zusammenfassung:Introduction -- Language evolution -- Once upon a time ... there was the PS -- Favourable factors for PS use in contemporary French -- The not so simple PS -- Substitutes for PS in contemporary French -- Methodology for the corpus analysis -- The PS across modes in contemporary French -- The PS in micro-diachrony -- Conclusions
"The disappearance of the French simple past has been hotly debated since the early 20th century. This volume offers an overview of its fortunes since French emerged as a language, provides a description of its distinctive features, and discusses the potential impact of its supposed demise on the whole French verb system. These assumptions are tested against a large corpus of contemporary texts. The study concludes that, despite the erosion of its meaning and its increasingly infrequent use, the simple past tense is still used by native speakers in various contexts, and no single substitute has yet emerged. Nevertheless, the simple past may be evolving into a stylistic marker, making it fertile ground for future cross-linguistic studies"--
Beschreibung:Includes bibliographical references
Beschreibung:xxiv, 474 Seiten Diagramme
ISBN:9789004510326