Chapter 9
Imperfectivity in L’Étranger in French, English, Breton
Eric Corre | University Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3
Cross-linguistically, progressive constructions,
a sub-category of imperfectives, often have a locative origin, but
they take on a host of language-specific meanings. This corpus-based
study focuses on the narrative and descriptive modes in English and
Breton translations of the novel: in both languages, the progressive is analyzed as a
stativizing operator (De Swart,
1998; Michaelis,
2004, 2016),
which gives rise to backgrounding and subjective uses. However whereas
English has a general purpose simple past alongside the progressive,
Breton has an imperfect and a progressive. The
purpose of the paper is to provide a fine-grained analysis of the
similarities and differences of a superficially similar form, taking
into account the competing tense-aspect possibilities offered by two
unrelated languages.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Presentation of the method and definitions
- 2.1Method
- 2.2Definitions: Imperfective, Progressive
- 2.2.1Common definitions
- 2.2.2The Breton prog
- 3.Frequencies and cross-linguistic differences
- 3.1Multilingual perspective
- 3.2Monolingual perspective
- 3.2.1English: Variations in the use of progs
- 3.2.2Breton: A “fake” progressive construction
- 4.Comparative analysis of the English and the Breton progressives
- 4.1The English prog and its Breton translations
- 4.2The Breton prog and its English translations
- Conclusion
-
Notes
-
References
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