On modal tenses and tensed modals

Brenda Laca (1)

1 SFL - Structures Formelles du Langage

Our aim in this paper is to further explore the interactions between temporal configuration and modal interpretation by looking at facts from two Romance languages, French and Spanish. We concentrate on the partially diverging patterns for counterfactual readings in Spanish and French. Spanish avails itself of two different domain-widening strategies, backward-shifting of the time of the modal and conditional morphology, whereas French only has the second domain widening-strategy.

Keywords: tense; modality; aspect

Domains: Linguistics

Brenda Laca. On modal tenses and tensed modals. Ch. Nishida / C. Russi. Building a bridge between linguistic communities of the Old and the New World. Current research in tense, aspect, mood and modality, Rodopi, pp.163-198, 2012, Cahiers Chronos. ⟨halshs-00323340v2⟩