Le Remplacement de l’imparfait du subjonctif par le présent du subjonctif considéré dans une perspective de grammaticalisation (review)

This is a scholarly, authoritative, but very readable work on a topic that has hitherto not benefited from such exhaustive research. Kirsten Kragh examines the recession of the imperfect subjunctive in French and assesses the factors influencing this change, putting forward the theory of grammaticalization as a means to account for such development. According to her interpretation, the replacement of the imperfect subjunctive by the present subjunctive is an aspect of a more general reorganization of the tense system of French. Kragh proposes two main hypotheses: first, that the use or non-use of the imperfect subjunctive is governed significantly by register, thus conferring on this verb form a new role as a style marker rather than a temporal marker; second, that the erosion of the imperfect subjunctive is influenced by certain syntactic and semantic parameters. The volume is organized into twelve chapters and includes a fairly extensive Introduction and Conclusion. Kragh begins with an overview of four theories of language change, the focus of which narrows to the theory of grammaticalization, which she selects as the theoretical framework for her study. She then proceeds to examine existing works on the recession of the imperfect subjunctive, and subsequently explores literature on the modal value of the subjunctive and its system of tenses. The methodology and corpus used for the study are then presented, together with the statistical tools used for their analysis. Four chapters are devoted to the classification and results of the data analysis. The study concludes with an appraisal of the factors contributing to the demise of the imperfect subjunctive, of which the author identifies register as being the most prominent. The main strengths of this book are the comprehensive statistical analysis that Kragh presents and the depth of the treatment of the subject. In addition, in the absence of a suitable existing corpus for a study of this nature, the author has created her own, comprising 2277 tokens drawn entirely from literary sources; this is supplied with the book on a CD-ROM. Kragh writes in an accessible, fluid style and is careful to avoid generalizations and assumptions, substantiating her arguments in a balanced and coherent manner. The publication itself is clearly structured, with numerous graphics to illustrate the findings of the data analysis. One drawback is that, given its highly specialized nature as a work based on a doctoral thesis, the book as a whole will be of direct relevance to a somewhat limited readership. However, the wealth of information that it contains on more general topics, such as theories of language change and grammaticalization, will make it a valuable reference work for researchers and postgraduate students, or even for those working on languages other than French.