Future temporal reference in French: An introduction

This thematic issue of the Canadian Journal of Linguistics explores the expression of future temporal reference (FTR), that is, the different ways of expressing that an event will occur after the moment of speech, in French. Despite numerous studies on this topic dating as far back as the 1980s (Deshaies and Laforge 1981, Emirkanian and Sankoff 1985, Poplack and Turpin 1999, King and Nadasdi 2003, Wagner and Sankoff 2011, among others), a number of hotly debated points continue to incite discussion. To shed light on some of these issues, we assembled articles that deal with FTR from a range of perspectives.

In most contemporary varieties of spoken French, three main forms (or variants) are used to express that an event will take place in the future: the inflected future (or synthetic or morphological future, henceforth IF) as in (1); the periphrastic future (or analytic future, composed of the semi-auxiliary aller ‘to go’ followed by the infinitive, henceforth PF), as in (2); and the futurate present (or present-for-future, i.e., use of the present indicative morphological form with an expressly future temporal reference, henceforth P), as in (3).

1. 1. Je quitterai la semaine qui vient.   ‘I will leave next week.’

2. 2. Je vais quitter la semaine qui vient.   ‘I’m going to leave next week.’

3. 3. Je quitte la semaine qui vient.     ‘I’m leaving next week.’

At first glance, FTR may seem a somewhat mundane feature of French, especially considering that, on the surface, the same three variants (i.e., the IF, PF, and P) are consistently found across varieties. However, once we examine the underlying system of linguistic and social constraints that govern the alternation among these three forms, we begin to observe divergence across varieties. This raises new questions, not only regarding the constraints operating on these forms, but also with respect to dialectal differences across varieties of French and the history of the French language more generally.

1 The development of FTR variants in French

While the three FTR variants persist in most spoken varieties of French today, each form has its unique history. The IF is derived from the Vulgar Latin periphrastic construction involving a lexical verb in its infinitival form (e.g., cantare ‘to sing’, dicere ‘to say’) followed by the auxiliary habeo, as shown in example (4), from Lucretius (circa 99–55 BCE).

1. 4. item in multis hoc rebus dicere habemus    (Fleischman 1982: 52)

   ‘similarly we have this to say about many things’

Its presence in Late Latin accounts for why it gave rise to a synthetic future form across Romance languages. According to Fleischman (1982: 70–71), the development of the infinitive + habeo construction into the Romance IF forms can be interpreted as a reanalysis of the verbal phrase into a single verbal form, as shown in (5).

1. 5.

   Latin    cantare   habeo       (Fleischman 1982: 72)

   French	chanter	– ai
   Spanish	cantar	– é
   Italian	canter	– ò

In fact, the IF is attested in some of the earliest Old French sources, as shown in this example from Les Serments de Strasbourg from 842 CE (Gasté 1888: 12).

1. 6. Et ab Ludher nul plaid nunquam

   prindrai qui meon vol cist meon fradre

   Karle in damno sit

   ‘And I will never hold knowingly any counsel with Luther, which may be harmful to my brother Charles’ (our translation)

With regard to the PF, this relative newcomer – its appearance as a future marker dates to the Middle French period, from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century (Wilmet 1970, Champion 1978) – initially denoted spatial movement, but its co-occurrence with temporal adverbials allowed it to be situated in the future, as in (7).

1. 7. Je vais lui parler tout à l’heure.   (Molière, Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, Act 2, Scene 1)

   ‘I’m going to talk to him shortly.’

According to Fleischman (1982: 84), the future meaning eventually spread from the adverbial to the verbal phrase: it grammaticalized as a future marker and then came to be used without a temporal adverbial, as in (8).

1. 8. C’est sûr qu’il va vous parler picard, lui.   (Vimeu French; cf. Villeneuve...