Future temporal reference in French and Gascon

Abstract

This study presents a variationist sociolinguistic analysis of the expression of future temporal reference (FTR) in two related varieties of Gallo-Romance, French and Gascon, that find themselves in a situation of long-term language contact. In both languages, the inflected and periphrastic futures are used as alternative ways of expressing FTR; this study identifies the linguistic and social constraints that condition variability between the two forms in spontaneous speech data, with the aim of investigating bilateral grammatical transfer between French and Gascon. The discussion considers the ongoing grammaticalization of periphrastic constructions in both languages, as well as evidence for the existence of a bilingual grammatical system in which cognate variables in each language and constraints on variability are stored in the same abstract mental representation.