Études sémantiques et pragmatiques sur le temps, l’aspect et la modalité (review)

This edited volume is a collection of 10 papers presented at the Chronos 6 conference held in Geneva, in September 2004. The volume deals with studies related to semantic and pragmatic interpretations of tense, aspect and modality, dealing with future time reference, modals, narration and acquisition. The volume begins with the interpretation of future time reference and the representation of events by Camino Álvarez Castro, who considers the representation of future and past events, proposing a difference in their conceptualizations. Carl Vetters explores the polysemic nature of the modal verbs pouvoir and devoir. In his analyses, he focuses on alethic, epistemological, radical and sporadic uses of these modal verbs. He advances previous claims and tests the different semantic entailments created by these modals in (1) the puisque test and (2) the negation test. These tests allow for the different semantic uses of pouvoir and devoir to be separated on the basis of grammaticality. In a discussion of the imparfait, Bertrand Verine discusses the narrative uses of this tense and begins by considering its standard uses. Verine proposes an analysis of the imparfait narratif based on cotextual features, time and speech time. He applies his analysis to data and concludes that the effect is a ‘less categorical’ referential inscription on the time line. In a study on the Italian preposition quando (when), Laura Baranzini looks at its different uses and interpretations. Her focus is on semantic, syntactic and textual analyses of quando when followed by a verb in the indicative. She considers inverse subordination and the narrative effects presented by quando when used with perfective past tenses. In the last chapter, Emmaneulle Labeau presents a study on the acquisition of the French passé simple by English-speaking learners of French, English/French bilinguals and French native speakers. She tests the influence of input on the production of the passé simple. The results indicate (1) that university learners rarely produce the passé simple and (2) that overall the passé simple is used more in written than in spoken French. The individual chapters covered in this volume will be of general interest to researchers working in semantics and pragmatics and it is encouraging to find articles treating cross-linguistic issues, especially in the areas of tense and aspect.