Then and now in English and French
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Diana M. Lewis
Abstract
English now and then and French maintenant and alors all exemplify the cross-linguistic tendency for temporal adverbs to grammaticalize into markers of rhetorical relations. This paper analyses the polysemy of these adverbs in a comparable corpus of written-to-be-spoken speeches and unscripted spoken interviews. For now and maintenant, while the discourse patterns and the direction of change are remarkably similar, French and English seem to be at different points in the grammaticalization cycle, with maintenant being less grammaticalized than now. In the case of alors and then, it is the French lexeme that appears to be more bleached, occurring in a wider range of rhetorical contexts and in different discourse patterns from English then.
Abstract
English now and then and French maintenant and alors all exemplify the cross-linguistic tendency for temporal adverbs to grammaticalize into markers of rhetorical relations. This paper analyses the polysemy of these adverbs in a comparable corpus of written-to-be-spoken speeches and unscripted spoken interviews. For now and maintenant, while the discourse patterns and the direction of change are remarkably similar, French and English seem to be at different points in the grammaticalization cycle, with maintenant being less grammaticalized than now. In the case of alors and then, it is the French lexeme that appears to be more bleached, occurring in a wider range of rhetorical contexts and in different discourse patterns from English then.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Time in languages, languages in time 1
- Slavery and Britain in the 19th century 9
- Diachronic change in the ordering of kinship binomials 39
- Tracing processes in auxiliarization 67
- Translating verbal tenses between tensed and tenseless languages 95
- From language to language, from time to time 129
- Just a moment 155
- Then and now in English and French 181
- Time adverbials in English and Norwegian news discourse 201
- Minutes of action! A contrastive analysis of time expressions in English and Norwegian football match reports 229
- Cross-disciplinary and cross-linguistic uses of tensed verb phrases in the methods sections of master’s theses 255
- The expression of time in English and Czech children’s literature 283
- Index 305
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Time in languages, languages in time 1
- Slavery and Britain in the 19th century 9
- Diachronic change in the ordering of kinship binomials 39
- Tracing processes in auxiliarization 67
- Translating verbal tenses between tensed and tenseless languages 95
- From language to language, from time to time 129
- Just a moment 155
- Then and now in English and French 181
- Time adverbials in English and Norwegian news discourse 201
- Minutes of action! A contrastive analysis of time expressions in English and Norwegian football match reports 229
- Cross-disciplinary and cross-linguistic uses of tensed verb phrases in the methods sections of master’s theses 255
- The expression of time in English and Czech children’s literature 283
- Index 305
