French imparfait without aspecto-temporal value.

Abstract

This paper deals with some special uses of the French imperfect (Fr. imparfait) where past meaning and imperfective aspect seem irrelevant. First we examine one by one the different explanations proposed by Pierre Le Goffic, Louis de Saussure, Bertrand Sthioul, Anne-Marie Berthonneau and Georges Kleiber, and then we consider what they have in common. All these approaches emphasize the fact that the constitution of the propositional form of a sentence whose verb is in imparfait always involves a variable that needs to be determined. Based on this opinion, the article makes the hypothesis that the function of imparfait is sometimes pragmatical. When it does not serve to situate an event in time, it is used to produce a desired cognitive effect through the inferential operations which it forces the interlocutor to perform. This hypothesis is illustrated with an example of the imperfect of politeness (Fr. imparfait de politesse) where the interlocutor discovers the politeness of the sentence by searching for the value of the variable himself.

Keywords: French grammar, semantics, pragmatics, semantics of tenses, semantics of aspects