Abstract
This paper deals with a pair of parallel constructions in English and French. They are parallel in form, consisting of a copular verb and an infinitive; and in function, expressing a deontic modality of ‘necessity/futurity.’ These forms, however, are potentially ambiguous with respect to the interpretations of the semantic relations between the subject and the infinitive. The results of the surveys on parallel corpora show that the French etre a construction is used less frequently than the English be to construction. The analyses of the retrieved examples reveal French preferences for (i) lexical expressions of modality, (ii) non-passive voice and (iii) human subjects as the influencing factors behind the comparative infrequency of etre a sentences. These preferences, some of which have been noticed in the literature of comparative stylistics, are thus empirically confirmed by the corpus data examined here.
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