The superseding of imperfect subjunctive by the present subjunctive in modern French

The purpose of this paper is to describe how and to what extent the present subjunctive form supersedes the use of the imperfect subjunctive form. The past subjunctive is no longer employed in spoken French and it appears that remnants of the form in spoken register are found no later than the beginning of the 20^th century. However, the imperfect subjunctive still exists in written French, although it is constantly threatened by the present subjunctive. This paper aims to provide a clear picture of the status of the imperfect subjunctive in the French verb system and to clarify the development that has taken place in the course of the 20^th century. I intend to focus on the remnants of the verb form in adverbial and complement clauses in past tense contexts.

The most recent research on the phenomenon has been published by Marcel Barral in 1980. He deals thoroughly with the problem, but both his empirical studies and his theoretic frame are in my opinion rather insufficient. He makes no attempt to explain the change, nor does he manage to see any structure in the new system. He concludes that the imperfect subjunctive is still in use, but under completely unclarified conditions.

In my research, the phenomenon is seen as a variant of a process of degrammaticalization in Andersen's sense of the term whereby the past subjunctive loses its original grammatical, i.e. temporal, value to the extent that the function of the imperfect subjunctive is now reduced to an indication of style, i.e. a sort of expressive pragmatic value, rather than a marker of tense. Simultaneously, the present subjunctive acquires grammatical value in past tense contexts. The expression of past tense in the subordinate clauses becomes pleonastic; it appears that tense expressed in the matrix-verb is sufficient.

The approach taken is essentially functional and based on the broadly defined assumption that grammaticalization is a change of relations between form and meaning (Heltoft et al. 2005: 19). Reference is made to the theories proposed by Hopper & Traugott (1993), Andersen (1989, 2001) and to the results from the Danish network group presented in Heltoft et al. (2005).

The method used to test my hypotheses is based on corpus linguistics, combining a data-driven with a theory-driven approach.

References

Andersen, H. (2001) "Markedness and the theory of linguistic change" in Andersen, H. ed., Actualization. Linguistic change in progress, Amsterdam, John Benjamins, pp. 21-57.

Andersen, H. (ms.), "Linguistic change and the theory of markedness" Unpublished paper given at

the Thirteenth International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Düsseldorf, ugust 1997.

Andersen, H. (1989) "Understanding Linguistic Innovations" in Breivik, L.E. & E. H. Jahr, Trends, Linguistics, Studies and Monographs 43, Language Change, Contributions to the Study of Its Causes, Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter.

Barral, M. (1980) L'imparfait du subjonctif, Edition A. & J. Picard, Paris