Labelle, Marie
(2002).
« The selectional restrictions of French past tenses ».
Canadian Journal of Linguistics / Revue Canadienne de Linguistique, 47(1), pp. 159-192.
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Résumé
This article argues against the idea that the Imparfait & the Passe Simple in French are aspectually sensitive tense operators. Both morphemes combine with any type of eventuality. It is not the case that a clause in the Imparfait denotes a state, or that a clause in the Passe Simple denotes an event. It is proposed that the Passe Simple is a true past tense, which introduces a past eventuality in the discourse with the condition that it be the maximal eventuality of the appropriate type. The Imparfait is analyzed as a dyadic morpheme, which selects an eventuality as internal argument & a past temporal referent of discourse as external argument, where the eventuality provides a condition on the temporal referent.