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The Expression of Tense, Aspect, Modality and Evidentiality in Albert Camus’s L'Étranger and Its Translations / L'Étranger de Camus et ses traductions : questions de temps, d'aspect, de modalité et d'évidentialité (TAME): An empirical study / Etude empirique
Edited by Eric Corre, Danh Thành Do-Hurinville and Huy Linh Dao
[Lingvisticæ Investigationes Supplementa 35] 2020
► pp. 283–301

Chapter 15
Modal verbs in L’Étranger and its Romance translations

Old problems and new perspectives

| University of Murcia

In this paper we compare L’Étranger to two Spanish translations in order to shed light on two theoretical issues. Firstly, the externalization problem (Laca, 2018): where do temporal and aspectual auxiliaries realize preferably in Sp. vs. Fr.? Are high perfects related to low perfects? Secondly, perfect tenses raise a problem when it comes to translate epistemic modal sentences from Fr. into Sp. In a configuration with a low perfect the modal may accept both the imparfait and the simple past. Each of the solutions has a particular contribution on discourse. Epistemic modals will also prove to serve both as a means to indirectly order the situations described in the foreground and to achieve the characteristic impression of vividness of L’Étranger due to their particular semantics.

Keywords: epistemic modals, Spanish, L’Étranger , discourse, tense
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Tenses and epistemic modal verbs
    • 2.1The linearization problem
    • 2.2The analysis: Predictions
  • 3.Tenses and epistemic modals in L’Étranger
    • 3.1Perfect linearizations
    • 3.2High and low perfects in context
      • 3.2.1French high perfects in context
      • 3.2.2Spanish low perfects in context
    • 3.3The stylistic import of epistemic tensed modals
  • 4.Other issues
    • 4.1Weak and strong necessity cross-linguistically
    • 4.2Modals added and modals suppressed
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 11 August 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lis.35.15bra
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