Cover not available
Part of
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. 117–142

Chapter 7
Temporal prominence demotion in updating imparfait uses in L’Étranger

| Universität zu Köln

We investigate certain time updating uses of the French Imparfait in Camus’ L’Étranger which express ongoing eventualities but also update narrative time. Our focus lies on progressives with narrative features without an explicit marking of the update. We apply the prominence-based temporal account of Becker & Egetenmeyer (2018) and concentrate on the level of relations between time points. Using this approach, we determine the prominence value of the reference points the imparfaits introduce. In the described uses, the prominence value is demoted to minimally prominent within its domain. This has important consequences for the temporal structure of the passage they occur in as the prominence demoted reference point is not available as an anchor for following temporal updates. A comparison with two Spanish translations of L’Étranger supports our analysis.

Keywords: temporal discourse structure, prominence, tense, imparfait, L’Étranger , French, Spanish
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Time updating uses of the imparfait
  • 3.A prominence-based account on the interrelations between times
  • 4.Studies carried out concerning time updating imparfait uses in L’Étranger
  • 5.The progressive with narrative features without explicit marking in L’Étranger
  • 6.The progressive with narrative features with explicit marking
  • 7.Further evidence: Comparison with the Spanish translation
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
  • Corpus
Published online: 11 August 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lis.35.07ege
References
Altshuler, D.
(2010) Temporal interpretation in narrative discourse and event internal reference. PhD dissertation, New Brunswick: Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Asher, N. et al.
(1995) De l’espace-temps dans l’analyse du discours. Semiotique 9, 11–62 (online edition: [URL], p. 1–47).
Asher, N., & Lascarides, A.
(2003) Logics of Conversation. Cambridge et al. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Balibar, E.
(1972) Le passé composé fictif dans L’Étranger d’Albert Camus. Littérature, 7, 102–119. DOI logo
Banfield, A.
(1982) Unspeakable Sentences: Narration and Representation in the Language of Fiction. Boston: Routledge & Paul.Google Scholar
Bary, C. L.
(2009) Aspect in Ancient Greek. A Semantic Analysis of the Aorist and Imperfective. Nijmegen: Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen (= PhD dissertation).Google Scholar
Beauchemin, Yves
(1981) Le Matou. Montreal: Québec Amérique.Google Scholar
Becker, M., & Egetenmeyer, J.
(2018) A prominence-based account of temporal discourse structure. Lingua, 214, 28–58. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Benveniste, É.
(1966) Problèmes de linguistique générale. Paris: Gallimard (= Bibliothèque des sciences humaines).Google Scholar
Berthonneau, A.-M., & Kleiber, G.
(1999) Pour une réanalyse de l’imparfait de rupture dans le cadre de l’hypothèse anaphorique méronomique. Cahiers de praxématique [En ligne], 32, 119–166; [URL]
Bertinetto, P. M.
(1986) Tempo, aspetto e azione nel werbe italiano. Il sistema dell’indicativo. Firenze: L’Accademia della Crusca.Google Scholar
Bres, J.
(2005) L’imparfait dit narratif. Paris: CNRS Éditions (= Collection sciences du langage).Google Scholar
Bu, J.
(2016) A semantic study of tense backshift and its literary effects in FID. Journal of Literary Semantics 45 (1), 49–75. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cabillau, J.-F.
(1971) L’expression du temps dans “L’Étranger” d’Albert Camus. Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, 49(3), 866–874. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Caudal, P., & Vetters, C.
(2005) Que l’imparfait n’est pas (encore) un prétérit. In P. Larrivée, & E. Labeau (Eds.), Nouveaux Développements de l’imparfait (pp. 45–77). Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi (= Cahiers Chronos 14).Google Scholar
van Dijk, T.
(1982) Episodes as units of discourse analysis. In D. Tannen (Ed.), Georgetown University Roundtable on Languages & Linguistics (pp. 177–195). Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Doron, E.
(1991) Point of view as a factor of content. In S. K. Moore, & A. Z. Wyner (Eds.), Proceedings of the 1st Semantics and Linguistic Theory Conference (pp. 51–64). Linguistic Society of America.Google Scholar
Egetenmeyer, J.
Submitted a). Temporal relations of free indirect discourse events.
Submitted b). Time updating uses of the French imparfait extending across genres.
Eggermont, C.
(2010) L’étrange Passé Composé dans “L’Étranger” d’Albert Camus. Romaneske, 35(4), 16–22. [Preprint version]Google Scholar
Genette, G.
(1980) Narrative Discourse. An Essay in Method. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Grobe, E. P.
(1967a) An exemplary case of the French “imparfait de durée”. Romance Notes, 9(1), 152–156.Google Scholar
(1967b) Passé simple versus imparfait. The French Review, 41(3), 344–356.Google Scholar
Guéron, J.
(2015) Subjectivity and Free Indirect Discourse. In J. Guéron (Ed.), Sentence and Discourse (pp. 256–286). Oxford: Oxford University Press (= Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Himmelmann, N., & Primus, B.
(2015) Prominence beyond prosody – a first approximation. In A. De Dominicis (Ed.), pS-prominenceS: Prominences in Linguistics (pp. 38–58). Proceedings of the International Conference, Viterbo: DISUCOM Press.
Hinterwimmer, S.
(2017) Two kinds of perspective taking in narrative texts. In D. Burgdorf et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 27th Semantics and Linguistic Theory Conference (SALT 27), 282–301. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jasinskaja, K., & Karagjosova, E.
Forthcoming). Rhetorical Relations. In L. Matthewson et al. Eds. The Companion to Semantics Oxford Wiley
Jones, M. A.
(1996) Foundations of French syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (= Cambridge textbooks in linguistics). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kamp, H.
(2013) Deixis in discourse. Reichenbach on temporal reference. In K. von Heusinger & A. ter Meulen (Eds.), Meaning and the Dynamics of Interpretation (pp. 105–159). Leiden: Brill (= Current Research in the Semantics/Pragmatics Interface 29). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kamp, H., & Reyle, U.
(1993) From discourse to logic. Introduction to modeltheoretic semantics of natural language, formal logic and Discourse Representation Theory. Pt. 2. Dordrecht et al.: Kluwer Academic Publishers (= Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy 42).Google Scholar
Kamp, H., & Rohrer, C.
(1983) Tense in texts. In R. Bäuerle, C. Schwarze, & A. von Stechow (Eds.), Meaning, use, and interpretation of language (pp. 250–269). Berlin & New York: Walter de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kamp, H., van Genabith, J., & Reyle, U.
(2011) Discourse Representation Theory. In D. M. Gabbay, & F. Guenthner (Eds.), Handbook of Philosophical Logic, 2nd ed., vol. 15, (pp. 125–394). Dordrecht et al.: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Klein, W.
(1994) Time in Language. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Labeau, E.
(2004) Le(s) temps du compte rendu sportif. Journal of French Language Studies 14, 129–148. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2006) French television talk: What tenses for past time? International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 11(1), 1–28. DOI logo. [Page reference in the text corresponds to online version.]Google Scholar
Labelle, M.
(2003) Events, states and the French imparfait. In Y. Roberge, & A. T. Pérez Leroux (Eds.), Romance Linguistics: Theory and Acquisition: Selected Papers from the 32nd Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Toronto, April 2002, (pp. 165–180). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Landeweerd, R.
(1998) Discourse semantics of perspective and temporal structure. Groningen: Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (= PhD dissertation).Google Scholar
Lhafi, S. C.
(2012) Zum Plusquamperfekt im Französischen und Spanischen. Kontrastive Untersuchung aus textlinguistischer Perspektive. Frankfurt am Main et al.: Peter Lang. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Molendijk, A.
(1990) Le passé simple et l’imparfait: une approche reichenbachienne. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
(2005) The Imparfait of French and the Past Progressive of English. In B. Hollebrandse, A. van Hout, & C. Vet (Eds.), Crosslinguistic perspectives on tense, aspect and modality (pp. 119–129). Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi (= Cahiers Chronos 13).Google Scholar
Molendijk, A., et al.
(2004) Meaning and use of past tenses in discourse. In F. Corblin, & H. de Swart (Eds.), Handbook of French Semantics (pp. 271–308). Stanford: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Patard, A.
(2010) L’imparfait en voie de « prétérisation » ? Quelques éléments de réflexion. Travaux du Cercle Belge de Linguistique 5, 1–15.Google Scholar
Polanyi, L.
(1988) A formal model of the structure of discourse. Journal of Pragmatics, 12(5–6), 301–638. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reichenbach, H.
([1947] 1956) Elements of Symbolic Logic. New York et al.: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Sartre, J.-P.
([1943] 1947) Explication de L’Étranger . In J.-P. Sartre (Ed.), Situations I (pp. 99–121). Paris, Gallimard.Google Scholar
Smith, C.
(2003) Modes of Discourse. The Local Structure of Texts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
de Swart, H.
(2001) Discourse properties of the Perfect and related tenses in French, English, and Dutch. Groninger Arbeiten zur Germanistischen Linguistik, 44, 195–212.Google Scholar
(2007) A cross-linguistic discourse analysis of the Perfect. Journal of Pragmatics, 39(12), 2273–2307. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tasmowski-De Ryck, L.
(1985) L’imparfait sans et avec rupture. Langue française, 67(3), 59–77. DOI logoGoogle Scholar

Corpus

Base textuelle FRANTEXT
, ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine. [URL]. Version: December 2016.
Camus, A.
(1942) L’Étranger. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Valente
(2005) = Camus, A. (2005) El extranjero. Traducción de José Ángel Valente. Madrid: Alianza Editorial / Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores.Google Scholar
Del Carril
(2013) = Camus, A. (2013) El extranjero. Traducción de Bonifacio Del Carril. Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Astrid De Wit, Frank Brisard, Carol Madden-Lombardi, Michael Meeuwis & Adeline Patard
2024. Beyond Aspectual Semantics, DOI logo
Egetenmeyer, Jakob
2023. The Temporal Relationships between the Pluscuamperfecto andmientras+ Imperfecto. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 16:1 ► pp. 63 ff. DOI logo
Egetenmeyer, Jakob
2024. The The time updating imperfecto in Spanish. Moenia DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 23 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.