Chapter published in:
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 empiriqueEdited by Eric Corre, Danh Thành Do-Hurinville and Huy Linh Dao
[Lingvisticæ Investigationes Supplementa 35] 2020
► pp. 162–183
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.
Keywords: imperfective aspect, progressive, imperfect, simple past, stativizing operator
Published online: 11 August 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/lis.35.09cor
https://doi.org/10.1075/lis.35.09cor
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