Diana M. Lewis | Aix Marseille University, Laboratoire Parole et Langage
English now and then and French maintenant and alors all
exemplify the cross-linguistic tendency for temporal adverbs to grammaticalize into markers of rhetorical relations. This
paper analyses the polysemy of these adverbs in a comparable corpus of written-to-be-spoken speeches and unscripted spoken
interviews. For now and maintenant, while the discourse patterns and the direction of change
are remarkably similar, French and English seem to be at different points in the grammaticalization cycle, with
maintenant being less grammaticalized than now. In the case of alors
and then, it is the French lexeme that appears to be more bleached, occurring in a wider range of rhetorical
contexts and in different discourse patterns from English then.
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