Jacques Bres

List of John Benjamins publications for which Jacques Bres plays a role.

Yearbook

Le conditionnel comme l’auxiliaire devoir, dans certains emplois, peuvent signifier l’évidentialité indirecte dans sa double dimension : inférentielle et reportive. Différents travaux ont étudié l’une ou l’autre forme dans l’un ou l’autre de ces emplois. Le présent article est consacré à la… read more
Bres, Jacques and Christel Le Bellec 2021 The past participle and the periphrastic passive construction in FrenchLingvisticæ Investigationes 44:1, pp. 37–65 | Article
Our hypothesis is that the past participle is a singular form in the TAM (tense-aspect-mood) linguistic system in French, in that it represents the internal time of the process on its terminal point ([R = Et]). Due to this representation of internal time, the p.p. can be related to the second… read more
How does the French passé composé contribute to making each sentence of L’Étranger look like “an island”, to quote J.-P. Sartre? After going through the grammaticalization of the passé composé into a narrative past tense, and defining narrative textuality, we consider three possible explanatory… read more
Bres, Jacques, Sascha Diwersy and Giancarlo Luxardo 2018 Chapter 4. The competition between the present conditional and the prospective imperfect in French over the centuries: First resultsTense, Aspect, Modality, and Evidentiality: Crosslinguistic perspectives, Ayoun, Dalila, Agnès Celle and Laure Lansari (eds.), pp. 65–82 | Chapter
While a significant number of works are known about the competition over the centuries between the synthetic future and the periphrastic prospective present, the parallel competition between the present conditional and the periphrastic construction with the prospective imperfect has received less… read more
Du participe passé en français : fonctionnements, valeur en langue et effets de sens en discours Qu’est-ce qui fait que le participe passé en emploi nu peut être incident au prime actant des intransitifs-être (à l’exception de aller), de quelques rares intransitifs-avoir, de certains… read more
Bres, Jacques and Emmanuelle Labeau 2015  Venir de (+ infinitive): An immediate anteriority marker in FrenchDiachronica 32:4, pp. 530–570 | Article
This paper deals with the grammaticalisation of venir into an aspectual auxiliary of immediate anteriority, against the traditional approach (Gougenheim 1971 [1929]) according to which venir de + inf, would express recent past and so would be a temporal auxiliary. On the basis of the (revised)… read more
In Old and Middle French (12th–16th centuries), va [“goes”] + inf was used in narrations in the past. A similar usage seems to have reappeared and be spreading today. However, the old construction combined with past tenses whereas the new one is found only with forms anchored in present and future. read more