Maintenant : un cas de graminaticalisation ?

Abstract

Annie Bertin : Maintenant : un cas de grammaticalisation ? Maintenant has a temporal-adverbial use, in which it introduces the moment of utterance, and a logical use as "connecteur", where it expresses opposition. It thus seems to have evolved in a way comparable to or, which was used in Old French to refer to the moment of utterance. The first part of the paper shows that the semantic description of maintenant falls within the problematics of grammaticalization and that the evolution of the term can serve as an illustration of the central theses found in the research on grammaticalization. The second part is more descriptive and focuses on the uses of maintenant in Middle French, in order to describe the relation between the deictic value and the other temporal and logical values, and to oppose maintenant to or, following M.L. Ollier, so as to seize the difference between those two terms.