Jacques Bres

Bres, Jacques 2022 Conditionnel et auxiliaire devoir en français, mêmes fonctionnements évidentiels ? Lingvisticæ Investigationes 45:1, pp. 31–51 | Article

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 French Lingvisticæ 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

Bres, Jacques 2020 Chapter 3. Passé composé et insularisation phrastique dans L’Étranger d’A. Camus: De quelques problèmes de traduction en catalan et en castillan 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, Corre, Eric, Danh Thành Do-Hurinville and Huy Linh Dao (eds.), pp. 39–58 | Chapter

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 results Tense, 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

Bres, Jacques et Christel Le Bellec 2017 Du participe passé en français: Fonctionnements, valeur en langue et effets de sens en discours Lingvisticæ Investigationes 40:2, pp. 274–303 | Article

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 French Diachronica 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

Bres, Jacques and Emmanuelle Labeau 2013 The narrative construction va + infinitive in Contemporary French: A linguistic phoenix rising from its medieval ashes? Diachronica 30:3, pp. 295–322 | Article

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

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Belgian Journal of Linguistics (BJL)

Edited by Timothy Colleman

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