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The epistemic uses of the English simple past and the French imparfait

When temporality conveys modality

Abstract

This chapter explores the connection between past tense and modality in English and French. After arguing for a temporal definition of past tenses, I reinterpret the classical opposition between temporal uses and modal uses in terms of the speakers’s referential or subjective intentionality. I further distinguish between the epistemic uses – which express the speaker’s assessment of the probability of the denoted situation – and the illocutory uses – which express the speaker’s degree of commitment in her speech act. I finally suggest an analysis of two epistemic uses of the English simple past and the French imperfect, namely their conditional use and optative use, thanks to the notion of dialogism, which refers to the heterogeneity of the enunciative sources of a given utterance.

Abstract

This chapter explores the connection between past tense and modality in English and French. After arguing for a temporal definition of past tenses, I reinterpret the classical opposition between temporal uses and modal uses in terms of the speakers’s referential or subjective intentionality. I further distinguish between the epistemic uses – which express the speaker’s assessment of the probability of the denoted situation – and the illocutory uses – which express the speaker’s degree of commitment in her speech act. I finally suggest an analysis of two epistemic uses of the English simple past and the French imperfect, namely their conditional use and optative use, thanks to the notion of dialogism, which refers to the heterogeneity of the enunciative sources of a given utterance.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. List of contributors vii
  4. Acknowledgments ix
  5. Introduction 1
  6. Part I. Theoretical foundations
  7. The definition of modality 21
  8. The English present 45
  9. The organization of the German clausal grounding system 87
  10. Grounding in terms of anchoring relations 109
  11. Part II. Descriptive application
  12. Some remarks on the role of the reference point in the construal configuration of “more” and “less” grounding predications 137
  13. New current relevance in Croatian 159
  14. Aspect as a scanning device in natural language processing 181
  15. Part III. Descriptive application
  16. Imperfective aspect and epistemic modality 217
  17. Communicating about the past through modality in English and Thai 249
  18. The epistemic uses of the English simple past and the French imparfait 279
  19. Name Index 311
  20. Subject Index 315
Cognitive Approaches to Tense, Aspect, and Epistemic Modality
This chapter is in the book Cognitive Approaches to Tense, Aspect, and Epistemic Modality
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.29.16pat

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. List of contributors vii
  4. Acknowledgments ix
  5. Introduction 1
  6. Part I. Theoretical foundations
  7. The definition of modality 21
  8. The English present 45
  9. The organization of the German clausal grounding system 87
  10. Grounding in terms of anchoring relations 109
  11. Part II. Descriptive application
  12. Some remarks on the role of the reference point in the construal configuration of “more” and “less” grounding predications 137
  13. New current relevance in Croatian 159
  14. Aspect as a scanning device in natural language processing 181
  15. Part III. Descriptive application
  16. Imperfective aspect and epistemic modality 217
  17. Communicating about the past through modality in English and Thai 249
  18. The epistemic uses of the English simple past and the French imparfait 279
  19. Name Index 311
  20. Subject Index 315
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