The French Future: evidentiality and incremental information
Résumé
We propose a new analysis for the French future, which treats it as a modal-evidential, combining two perspectival points, a conjectural and a ratificational one, arguing that future signals an increment of information in time. Considering that future also contributes a relative tense, we explain a variety of uses also covering previously unexplained cases, in which the speaker has knowledge at the time of the utterance and still uses the future. Finally, our account could shed some light on cross-linguistic facts and most notably on the relation between the ratificational French future and the conjectural future in Italian, paving the way for a typological distinction between language types: 'conjectural future type' languages and 'ratificational future type' ones.
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