CONTEXTUAL VALUES OF THE IMPERFECT IN THE CURRENT ROMANIAN LANGUAGE
CONTEXTUAL VALUES OF THE IMPERFECT IN THE CURRENT ROMANIAN LANGUAGE

Summary/Abstract: No linguist or grammarian proposed the status of mode for the imperfect. The new modal meanings attached to the imperfect are: counterfactuality and distancing. The prelude would allow marking the unreality of the facts imagined by a child. Therefore, the prelude forms would serve to express two types of modality: an epistemic one, in which the transition from the real world to the imaginary one, of the game ("reality-switching") is marked, and one of the illocutionary, as specified by the authors: Berthonneau & Kleiber (1994), Anscombre (2004), Patard and Richard. We note that similar epistemic modal effects have been observed in other uses of the imperfect by authors such as; Adam (1992), Gosselin (1999), Berthonneau & Kleiber (2003), Bres (2006), being associated with counter-real processes (eg: "Un pas de plus et elle était dehors.") or hypothetical (eg: " Si j'étais riche, je partirais aux Maldives.». Thus, modal values leave open all possible perspectives: follow-up, inflection or process interruption, as specified by S. Mellet (1988: 10).

• Details
• Contents