Étude contrastive du présent dans un récit au passé en français et en japonais

Abstract

This paper is intended as an contrastive study of present narrative in French and in Japanese within the framework of Mental Space Theory. In French the so called “historical present” is a metaphorical use of present tense intending to convey past events as if it were now present before the speaker’s eye. But in Japanese the present tense is used to describe the state of past situations without any stylistic effects. The difference comes from the different tense systems of the two languages. In French all events must be indicated from the speaker’s position, but Japanese tense indicate only the relation between the event and the v-point spaces. This may account for the use of the present tense in Japanese.