Semantic overlaps of French modal expressions

Abstract

Although there is no consensus on whether French has any true modal auxiliary, devoir ‘must’ is one of the very few possible candidates. Most studies of devoir concentrate on criteria for distinguishing its epistemic and root semantic values, but some also explore the subtle semantic nuances it conveys depending on context. Here, we identify discrete meanings through the analysis of semantic overlaps between devoir and other French modal expressions, such as probablement ‘probably’, être supposé ‘to be supposed to’, or falloir ‘ought to’. The analysis of data from two corpora on Montreal French, collected in 1971 and 1984, shows that:1. There is only one root semantic value exclusively associated with devoir, namely, the notion of desirability (as in the English ‘should’).2. There are different patterns of use of the competing modal expressions within each semantic field analyzed, according to the social class of the speaker. Moreover, some patterns characterizing a specific social group are acquired relatively late.

Real‐time changes in the paradigm of personal pronouns in Montreal French

“…sociolinguistic interviews). Since the aim of both the 1971 and 1984 projects was to represent interindividual variation, we obtain a clearer picture of the use of some features of Montreal French during this time span, as reported in many studies (Daveluy 1987;Lessard 1988;Thibault and Daveluy 1989;Thibault 1991a;Thibault 1991b;Daveluy and Blondeau 1993;Blondeau 1994;Warren 1994). However, this second corpus, like the ®rst one, oers little or no possibility of measuring stylistic variation, although the impact of social structure on linguistic variation was again taken into account.…”

Sociolinguistic Factors in Grammatical Change: The Expression of the Future in Canarian Spanish

“…5 Sociolinguistic and quantitative analyses include verbal typology as one of the determining factors of variation and change. Some of these studies are, for example, those of Nevalainen & Rissanen (1986), Tottie (1983), Hargevik (1983), Bentivoglio (1987) and Thibault (1991). 6 Jacobson (1983) had already observed the influence that the absence of subject (it is the second factor in importance after the pronoun there) had in the location in the sentence of the adverb probably.…”

“…6 Jacobson (1983) had already observed the influence that the absence of subject (it is the second factor in importance after the pronoun there) had in the location in the sentence of the adverb probably. Other research taking this type of determinant into consideration, for example, was undertaken by Thibault (1991) on the alternation of devoir and probablement, when they share the same epistemic meaning of probability, and, finally, by Labov (1969), with the aim of discovering the most relevant determining factors in the elision and the contraction of the copula in non-standard black English.…”

“…In English it has also been pointed out that this factor plays an essential role in the appearance of modal elements that demonstrate the speaker's desire to distance himself/herself from what he/she is saying (Jacobson, 1983, Thibault, 1991.…”

When a linguistic variable doesn’t vary (much): The subjunctive mood in a conservative variety of Acadian French and its relevance to the actuation problem

“…), then we might be able to see whether it is the larger semantic class of verbs which can express a similar meaning that selects the subjunctive or only a particular subset of this class (namely, those verbs which have been found to select the subjunctive). 29 Such an 29 Such an approach to the variable context can be seen in Thibault's (1991) analysis of the semantic fields of the French verb devoir and, more recently, in Edmonds, Gudmestad, and Donaldson's (2017) Furthermore, the fact that the subjunctive is only possible when the verb is negated (functioning then to express doubt) lends support to the fact that the subjunctive works, along with the main clause element, to express a specific semantic meaning (in this case, doubt). Conversely, if croire was simply lexically conditioning the subjunctive, this would not account as to why negation is required for this main verb, but not others (e.g., falloir, vouloir).…”