Abstract

Based on evidence presented by a number of authors since the 1980s concerning various pragmatic uses of contemporary French toujours (c’est toujours ca ; tu peux toujours essayer ; toujours est-il que ; etc.), this paper draws up an inventory of the individual (grammatical and pragmatic) meanings of this adverb and retraces their internal history. The author has tracked down the appearance of the different usages of toujours in a meta-corpus including various dictionaries and data-bases as well as personal readings. The study leads to a historical reconstruction of the different pragmatic meanings of toujours over time, the aim being to distinguish between usages coined directly on the temporal adverb from those originating from already pragmatic ones.

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