Chapter 14. Phraseological usage patterns of past tenses
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Oliver Wicher
Abstract
This chapter presents a corpus-driven investigation into usage patterns of the French past tenses passé composé and imparfait. Using a new reference corpus of French, the Corpus de référence du français contemporain, and adopting a construction grammar perspective, we analyze past-tense occurrences of two highly frequent polysemous verbs, vouloir ‘want’ and voir ‘see’. Assuming that the two tenses are an alternation phenomenon, collostructions can be identified that differ in terms of their attracted complements. These highly distinctive collexemes indicate phraseological uses of past-tensed verbs whose tense choice is constrained. The results provide further evidence for the inseparability of lexis and grammar and the semantic-pragmatic shifts that are prevalent in past-tense constructions of highly frequent polysemous verbs.
Abstract
This chapter presents a corpus-driven investigation into usage patterns of the French past tenses passé composé and imparfait. Using a new reference corpus of French, the Corpus de référence du français contemporain, and adopting a construction grammar perspective, we analyze past-tense occurrences of two highly frequent polysemous verbs, vouloir ‘want’ and voir ‘see’. Assuming that the two tenses are an alternation phenomenon, collostructions can be identified that differ in terms of their attracted complements. These highly distinctive collexemes indicate phraseological uses of past-tensed verbs whose tense choice is constrained. The results provide further evidence for the inseparability of lexis and grammar and the semantic-pragmatic shifts that are prevalent in past-tense constructions of highly frequent polysemous verbs.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- 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
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- 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
