Cover not available
Part of
Tense, Aspect, Modality, and Evidentiality: Crosslinguistic perspectives
Edited by Dalila Ayoun, Agnès Celle and Laure Lansari
[Studies in Language Companion Series 197] 2018
► pp. 41–64

Chapter 3
The temporal uses of French devoir and Estonian pidama (‘must’)

 | University of Tartu
 | University of Tartu
Using a parallel corpus, we compare the temporal uses of devoir in French and pidama (‘must’) in Estonian in order to identify possible correspondences in their future time reference. While they share similar properties in their root modality, they differ in their epistemic and postmodal uses. For French, we mostly follow the analysis of Hans Kronning (2001) who distinguishes three types of future-tense uses of devoir: alethic future, “subjective” and “objective” alethic future in the past. Our analysis demonstrates that unlike devoir, pidama does not have the “objective future in the past”. In contrast, the data reveal a high degree of correspondence between the two verbs in the other future-related uses reported for devoir and generally absent in Estonian descriptions.
Keywords: modal verbs, postmodal uses, future, French, Estonian
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2. The descriptions of the temporal uses of devoir and pidama in previous studies
  • 3.The results of the corpus analysis
    • 3.1Data and method
    • 3.2 The “objective” future in the past
    • 3.3The subjective future in the past
    • 3.4The “alethic future”
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 2 August 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.197.03tre
References (36)
References
Amon, Marri. 2016. Prantsuse modaalverbi devoir temporaalse kasutuse tõlkimisest eesti keelde (About translating temporal uses of the French modal verb devoir into Estonian). Eesti ja soome-ugri keeleteaduse ajakiri/Journal of Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics 7(2): 13–26.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan L., Pagliuca, William & Perkins, Revere D. 1991. Back to the future. In Approaches to Grammaticalization, Vol. 2 [Typological Studies in Language 19: 2], Elizabeth C. Traugott & Bernd Heine (eds), 17–58. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1994. The Evolution of Grammar: Tense, Aspect and Modality in the Languages of the World. Chicago IL: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Camus, Albert. 1957. Exile and the Kingdom, trans. by Justin O’Brien. New York NY: Random House.Google Scholar
Celle, Agnès. 2006. Temps et modalité: l’anglais, le français et l’allemand en contraste. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
CoPEF. Corpus parallèle estonien-français de l’Association franco-estonienne de lexicographie. <[URL]>
Dahl, Östen. 2000. The grammar of future time reference in European languages. In Tense and Aspect in the Languages of Europe, Östen Dahl (ed.), 309–328. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dendale, Patrick. 1994. Devoir épistémique, marqueur modal ou évidentiel? Langue Française 102: 24–40. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2000. Devoir épistémique à l’indicatif et au conditionnel: Inférence ou prédiction? In Actes du XXIIe Congrès International de Linguistique et de Philologie Romanes, Bruxelles, 23–29 juillet 1998, Annick Englebert, Michel Pierrard, Laurence Rosier & Dan van Raemdonck (eds), 159–169. Tübingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Erelt, Mati. 2001. Some notes on the grammaticalization of the verb pidama in Estonian. In Estonian Typological Studies V, Mati Erelt (ed.), 6–25. Tartu: Tartu University Press.Google Scholar
Erelt, Mati & Metslang, Helle. 2009. Some notes on proximative and avertive in Estonian. Linguistica Uralica XLV 3: 178–191. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gide, André. 1915. If it die…, trans. by Dorothy Bussy. London: Secker and Warburg.Google Scholar
Gimpel, Jean. 1980. Les bâtisseurs de cathédrales. Paris: Seuil.Google Scholar
Habicht, Külli. 2001. Vanhan kirjaviron modaalirakenteista. In Congressus Nonus Internationalis Fenno-Ugristarum 7.–13.8.2000 Pars IV Dissertationes sectionum: Linguistica I, Tõnu Seilenthal (ed.), 268–276. Tartu: Eesti Fennougristide Komitee.Google Scholar
Habicht, Külli & Prillop, Külli. 2016. Polüfunktsionaalne pidama-verb XVII sajandi kirjakeeles (The multifunctional verb pidama in the 17th-century written Estonian). Emakeele Seltsi aastaraamat 62: 38–61.Google Scholar
Kilgi, Annika. 2010. Tõlkekeele dünaamika piibli esmaeestinduse käigus: Verbi morfosüntaksi areng ja lõplik toimetamisfaas (The dynamics of language in the first translation of the Bible into Estonian). PhD dissertation, University of Tallinn.Google Scholar
Kronning, Hans. 1996. Modalité, cognition et polysémie: Sémantique du verbe modal ‘devoir’. Uppsala & Stockholm: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis & Almqvist & Wiksell International.Google Scholar
. 2001. Pour une tripartition des emplois du modal devoir . Cahiers Chronos 8: 67–84.Google Scholar
Kross, Jaan. 2003. The Czar’s Madman, trans. by Anselm Hollo. London: The Harvill Press.Google Scholar
Kuteva, Tania. 2000. TAM-auxiliation, and the avertive category in Northeast Europe. In Grammaticalisation aréale et sémantique cognitive: Les langues fenniques et sames, Actes du Colloque International du C.N.R.S. tenu les 9 et 10 avril 1999 en Sorbonne, Jocelyne Fernandez-Vest (ed.), 27–41. Tallinn: Eesti Keele Sihtasutus.Google Scholar
Le Matin, daily paper.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1961. Tristes Tropiques, trans. by John Russell. London: Hutchinson & Co.Google Scholar
Martin du Gard, Roger. 1922-1923. Les Thibault I: Le cahier gris - Le pénitencier - La belle saison. Paris: Folio (Gallimard).Google Scholar
Metslang, Helle. 2002. -ki/-gi ka ja nende soome kaimud (-ki/-gi, ka and their Finnish relatives). Lähivertailuja 12: 57–81.Google Scholar
. 1996. The development of the futures in the Finno-Ugric languages. In Estonian: Typological Studies, I, Mati Erelt (eds), 123–144. Tartu: Tartu University Press.Google Scholar
. 1994. Eesti ja soome – futuurumita keeled? (Estonian and Finnish – Languages without future?). Keel ja Kirjandus 9–10: 534–616.Google Scholar
Nilsson-Ehle, Hans. 1943–1944. Le conditionnel ‘futur du passé’ et la périphrase devait + infinitif. Studia Neophilologica 16: 50–88. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Picoche, Jacqueline. 1993. Didactique du vocabulaire français. Paris: Nathan.Google Scholar
Reichenbach, Hans. 1947. Elements of Symbolic Logic. New York NY: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1964. Nausea, trans. by Lloyd Alexander. New York NY: New Direction.Google Scholar
Tammsaare, Anton Hansen. 2014. Truth and Justice. Andres and Pearu, trans. by Inna Feldbach and Alan Peter Trei. Stockholm: Haute Culture Books/Kreell AB.Google Scholar
Treikelder, Anu. 2016. Eesti modaalverbi pidama episteemilistest kasutustest võrdluses prantsuse verbiga devoir (The epistemic use of the Estonian modal pidama in comparison with the French modal devoir ). Eesti ja soome-ugri keeleteaduse ajakiri – Journal of Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics 7(2): 159–186.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2015. La modalité épistémique dans une perspective contrastive: Les verbes modaux devoir français et pidama estonien. In Actes du XIXème Congrès des Romanistes Scandinaves: Le XIXème Congrès des Romanistes Scandinaves, Reykjavik, 12.–15.Aug.2014, Sigrún Ástríður Eiríksdóttir (ed.), 1–17. <[URL]>
van der Auwera, Johan & Plungian, Vladimir. 1998. Modality’s semantic map. Linguistic Typology 2: 79–124. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vetters, Carl. 2004. Les verbes modaux pouvoir et devoir en français. Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire 82(3): 657–671. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vetters, Carl & Barbet, Cécile. 2006. Les emplois temporels des verbes modaux en français: Le cas de devoir . Cahiers de Praxématique 47: 191–214.Google Scholar