The decline of the French passé simple / / Emmanuelle Labeau.

• Superior document: Empirical Approaches to Linguistic Theory
• VerfasserIn: Labeau, Emmanuelle,
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden, Netherlands ;, Boston, Massachusetts : : Brill,, [2022]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Series: Empirical Approaches to Linguistic Theory
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (498 pages)

"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"-- Provided by publisher.

Table of Contents

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.