The diachrony of tenses in French.

The project deals with the evolution and grammaticalization of the conditional tense in French. The objective is three-fold. It first seeks to trace the principal changes affecting the usages of this verb form, notably with respect to its contexts of use and the related interpretations. The second aim is to determine the (grammaticalization) processes accounting for these changes, with a focus on the mechanisms triggering the emergence of new uses. Finally the path(s) of grammaticalization will be synthesized by means of a semantic map.

Keywords:FRENCH LANGUAGE, DIACHRONY

Disciplines:Language studies, Literary studies