Article published In:
International Journal of Corpus LinguisticsVol. 11:1 (2006) ► pp.1–28
French Television Talk
What tenses for past time?
On the basis of a transcribed French television corpus made of two news bulletins, two chat shows and one literary programme recorded in February 2003, this paper explores the claim that passé simple (PS) may still be used in prepared oral discourse (Pfister 1974). The corpus does not provide support for that use on television, but it seems to suggest a shift from temporal to aspectual features in French television talk: a perfective presentation prevails on a past presentation. This trend would need to be confirmed by a larger television corpus, tested in other types of oral discourse and tested on written corpora.
Keywords: French past tenses, oral French, perfective aspect
Cited by (5)
Cited by 5 other publications
Egetenmeyer, Jakob
2020. Chapter 7. Temporal prominence demotion in updating imparfait uses in L’Étranger. In The Expression of Tense, Aspect, Modality and Evidentiality in Albert Camus’sL'Étrangerand Its Translations /L'Étrangerde Camus et ses traductions : questions de temps, d'aspect, de modalité et d'évidentialité (TAME) [Lingvisticæ Investigationes Supplementa, 35], ► pp. 118 ff. 
Egetenmeyer, Jakob
2021. Genre Determining Prediction: Non-Standard TAM Marking in Football Language. Frontiers in Communication 6
Arhar Holdt, Špela, Kaja Dobrovoljc & Nataša Logar
2019. Simplicity matters: user evaluation of the Slovene reference corpus. Language Resources and Evaluation 53:1 ► pp. 173 ff.
Wicher, Oliver
2018. Chapter 14. Phraseological usage patterns of past tenses. In Tense, Aspect, Modality, and Evidentiality [Studies in Language Companion Series, 197], ► pp. 309 ff.
LABEAU, EMMANUELLE
2015. Il était une fois le passé simple. . .. Journal of French Language Studies 25:2 ► pp. 165 ff.
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