Chapter 2. A quantitative perspective on modality and future tense in French and German
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Annalena Hütsch
Abstract
This chapter looks at modal nuances conveyed by future tenses in French (futur simple, futur antérieur) and German (Futur I, Futur II) via a corpus-based study, using comparable newspaper corpora (Le Monde, Süddeutsche Zeitung). In addition to a qualitative analysis based on an enunciative approach to modal forms (Rossari 2016), we will adopt a quantitative perspective in order to elicit statistical evidence on the nature and degree of modality expressed by the future tense in daily newspapers. Besides the fact that modal use of future tenses is rather rare in both languages compared to their temporal use, the quantitative analysis shows that French appears to have a more modal use of future tense than German in the text type sampled.
Abstract
This chapter looks at modal nuances conveyed by future tenses in French (futur simple, futur antérieur) and German (Futur I, Futur II) via a corpus-based study, using comparable newspaper corpora (Le Monde, Süddeutsche Zeitung). In addition to a qualitative analysis based on an enunciative approach to modal forms (Rossari 2016), we will adopt a quantitative perspective in order to elicit statistical evidence on the nature and degree of modality expressed by the future tense in daily newspapers. Besides the fact that modal use of future tenses is rather rare in both languages compared to their temporal use, the quantitative analysis shows that French appears to have a more modal use of future tense than German in the text type sampled.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Preface vii
- Chapter 1. Introduction 1
- Chapter 2. A quantitative perspective on modality and future tense in French and German 19
- Chapter 3. The temporal uses of French devoir and Estonian pidama (‘must’) 41
- Chapter 4. The competition between the present conditional and the prospective imperfect in French over the centuries: First results 65
- Chapter 5. Evidentiality and the TAM systems in English and Spanish 83
- Chapter 6. Expressing sources of information, knowledge and belief in English and Spanish informative financial texts 109
- Chapter 7. Evidentiality and epistemic modality in Old Catalan 145
- Chapter 8. ‘I think’ 165
- Chapter 9. Embedding evidence in Tagalog and German 185
- Chapter 10. Questions as indirect speech acts in surprise contexts 213
- Chapter 11. Non-finiteness, complementation and evidentiality 239
- Chapter 12. The perfect in Avar and Andi 261
- Chapter 13. The different grammars of event singularisation 281
- Chapter 14. Phraseological usage patterns of past tenses 309
- Chapter 15. Path scales 335
- Name Index 357
- Subject index 363
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Preface vii
- Chapter 1. Introduction 1
- Chapter 2. A quantitative perspective on modality and future tense in French and German 19
- Chapter 3. The temporal uses of French devoir and Estonian pidama (‘must’) 41
- Chapter 4. The competition between the present conditional and the prospective imperfect in French over the centuries: First results 65
- Chapter 5. Evidentiality and the TAM systems in English and Spanish 83
- Chapter 6. Expressing sources of information, knowledge and belief in English and Spanish informative financial texts 109
- Chapter 7. Evidentiality and epistemic modality in Old Catalan 145
- Chapter 8. ‘I think’ 165
- Chapter 9. Embedding evidence in Tagalog and German 185
- Chapter 10. Questions as indirect speech acts in surprise contexts 213
- Chapter 11. Non-finiteness, complementation and evidentiality 239
- Chapter 12. The perfect in Avar and Andi 261
- Chapter 13. The different grammars of event singularisation 281
- Chapter 14. Phraseological usage patterns of past tenses 309
- Chapter 15. Path scales 335
- Name Index 357
- Subject index 363
