On the role of the present indicative in variable future-time reference in Hexagonal French

Abstract

This article investigates variable future-time expression among native speakers of Hexagonal French who participated in informal conversations. The quantitative analysis is the first to examine the inflectional future, periphrastic future, and present indicative as separate forms within a single statistical model of French oral production. Results indicate that temporal distance and presence/absence of a temporal expression predict use of these verb forms. The second phase of the analysis focused on the use of the present indicative in future-time contexts. The examination of each instance of the present indicative shows that an immediate lexical temporal indicator is not necessary for this form to convey futurity and that future-time reference is often established at the discourse level and occasionally through apparent shared knowledge between the interlocutors. This investigation suggests the value of including the present indicative in the analysis of future-time reference in Hexagonal French in order to fully capture variation.

Texting the future in Belgium and Québec: Present matters

“…Poplack and Turpin (1999) observed a rate of 7%, in comparison with the two morphological futures, which were at 20% for the Synthetic Future and 73% for the Analytic Future respectively. However, recent studies report a higher frequency of Present, 32% in informal conversations collected in France (Edmonds et al, 2017;Gudmestad et al, 2018), and 27.5% in France, and 42% in Québec in prepared oral speech data (Blondeau and Labeau, 2016).…”

“…Sankoff, Evans Wagner and Jensen, 2012) Ontario French (Grimm, 2010(Grimm, , 2015Grimm and Nadasdi, 2011) and other varieties of Laurentian French 5 (Stelling, 2008). In comparison, European varieties of spoken French have been underrepresented (Wales, 1983;Jeanjean, 1988;Hansen and Strudsolm, 2006;Fleury and Branca-Rosoff, 2010;Lindschouw, 2011;Edmonds, Gudmestad and Donaldson, 2017;Abouda and Skrovec, 2015;Villeneuve and Comeau, 2016;Gudmestad, Edmonds, Donaldson and Carmichael, 2018).…”

“…So far, only a few studies have considered all three variants (Poplack and Turpin, 1999;Poplack and Dion, 2009;Grimm, 2015;Blondeau and Labeau, 2016;Edmonds et al, 2017;Gudmestad et al, 2018). The exclusion of the Present from the analysis is partly due to the fact that most of the variationist studies have been based on data from semi-directed sociolinguistics interviews, where the Present variant is rare.…”

“…The exclusion of the Present from the analysis is partly due to the fact that most of the variationist studies have been based on data from semi-directed sociolinguistics interviews, where the Present variant is rare. Only recently have other types of corpora been studied: natural conversations (King and Nadasdi, 2003;Hansen and Strudsholm, 2006;Comeau, 2015;Edmonds et al, 2017, Gudmestad et al, 2018, weather reports (Blondeau and Labeau, 2016), and text messages (Labeau, 2014). These studies reported a larger presence of the Present variant, which warrants its integration in the analysis.…”

“…However, Grimm (2010) reports that this factor does condition variant choice in Hawkesbury (one of the Ontario French communities in the 2005 Ontario French corpus) where the Analytic Future is favoured in the presence of specific and non-specific adverbial specification. adverbs with other discursive cues in the referential context that encourage the use of the Present (Edmonds et al, 2017;Gudmestad et al, 2018).…”