A cognitive-pragmatic view of the French epistemic future

Abstract

ab st rac tIn this paper, we review the various types of epistemic usages of the (simple and anterior) future tenses in French with the assumption that what actually licenses their occurrence is not a semantic feature such as aspect but pragmatic effects that give relevance to the utterance at the moment of speech. We review the main hypotheses proposed in the relevant literature and conclude that epistemic futures seem to fulfill the function of communicating -through a metarepresentation of a future verification -not only epistemic modality and evidentiality, but also, and perhaps especially, the inference that a particular course of action has to be undertaken from the perspective of a state of affairs that is true in the present.

French future: Exploring the future ratification hypothesis

“…Unlike devoir, FUT can be used when the speaker knows that the prejacent is true at the time of utterance. Again, the example is due to de Saussure and Morency (2011 Here FUT does not express a conjecture. Rather, it postpones the time of verification that the shoes are on the shelf with respect to the time of utterance.…”

“…The one we provide in this paper will also be able to cover cases that are not easy to categorize in either one of the two classes (de rede dicto cases) and which clearly fall within a system of preferences. To our knowledge, this has only recently been considered in more depth (see de Saussure and Morency, 2011).…”

From epistemic modality to concessivity: Alternatives and pragmatic reasoning per absurdum

“…(19) and (20) also seem to be occurrences of the epistemic future that we have been discussing up to now. The question of the existence of a French epistemic future has regularly been discussed in the semantic and pragmatic literature (Schrott, 1997;Dendale, 2001;Morency, 2010;Saussure and Morency, 2012;Bellahsène, 2007;Vet, 1993;Vetters and Skibinska, 1998;Rocci, 2000;Vet and Kampers-Mahne, 2001;Stage, 2003;Barceló, 2006;Mari, 2009 a.o.). Similarly, descriptions in the literature on the English future mention this epistemic use (Celle, 2004 for a cross-linguistic French-English analysis; Declerck, 1991Declerck, , 2006Enç, 1996;Palmer, 2001;Copley, 2002 a.o.).…”

“…Since Damourette andPichon (1911-1940; futur putatif (putative future)) and, later, Wilmet (1976; futur conjectural (conjectural future)), there is a solid agreement that the French future tense conveys the idea of a conjecture and of a future verification of the conjecture (see for example Dendale, 2001;Morency, 2010;Saussure and Morency, 2012;Mari, 2016). On this view, the French future is different from the Italian future which does not feature this element of verification.…”

Quand le futur ne porte pas sur le procès qu’il actualise : futur d’énonciation et futur de découverte

“…La troisième enfin, est inhérente au fonctionnement du futur qui dans les deux cas, bien que de manière différente, ne porte pas sur le procès qu'il actualise. Ces emplois sont à première vue peu fréquents, ce qui explique peut-être qu'ils aient pu passer presque incognito des linguistes -nous avons seulement trouvé une rapide mention du premier dans et dans Vuillaume (1998) ; l'exemple (3), quant à lui, est proposé par Saussure et Morency (2012) qui en font une analyse différente de la nôtre. Dans le corpus de 149 énoncés au futur simple et au futur antérieur en français issus de différents genres discursifs (conversation, littérature, presse, internet) constitué dans le cadre des travaux présentés dans Azzopardi (2011), seuls 4 énoncés contenaient un futur en emploi d'énonciation et aucun emploi de découverte n'avait été relevé.…”