Author:

Keywords:

construction grammar, Italian

Abstract:

Context – Thinking about the future is a central capacity in anticipating scenarios about what will or could happen (Bishop and Strong 2010, Dunmire 2011). Futurity has a series of grammatical constructions for expressing intentions and predictions (Dahl 2000). Italian and French grammar, as well as constructional research on the future, largely focus on verbal predications (Berghs 2010, Hilpert 2008, Bertinotto 1991), i.e. on inflectional future tenses (Dahl and Velupillai 2011) and periphrastic verb constructions (Fleischman 1982). This view is reflected in (pedagogical) grammars of Italian and French: the verbal future is studied less than past tenses, due to a low degree in morphological (and so-called conceptual) complexity (Renzi and Salvi 1991). Alternative structures for the future, like temporal nouns or adverbs have been largely excluded from description (cf. Proudfoot 2005 and Sambre 2013). Objective –This talk describes future predications used by advanced Dutch mothertongue learners of L2 French and Italian (B1-C1 in the Common European Framework of Reference), making no a priori formal assumptions for futurity (Bittner 2005). An important extension is that the future is taken into the sphere of larger-than-clause discourse, a layer of description which holistically integrates different grammatical components and subsystems (Nikiforidou 2004: 23, 2011; Östman 2004; Taylor 2008: 39). We tentatively do so for two languages less studied in CxG (De Knop et al. fc. 2013, Legallois & Bouveret 2012). Framework - We adopt a usage-based perspective, using Langacker’s (1987, 1991, 2008) extended epistemic model as a conceptual template of futurity (Sambre 2009, 2012). Corpus – The corpus is composed of about 15 recorded video cv’s where university students (business, languages and communication) at BA3-MA level, were instructed to present their future professional and personal ambitions and goals, a communicative task that did not mention the objective of the present research. (Expected) results – Drawing on previous corpus-based research in a non didactical L1 setting (Sambre 2009, 2012, 2013), we develop a form-content CxG template which provides an account of futurity based on communicatie strategies used by authentic L2 language users. These strategies creatively exploit the possibilities of the language to express the future (often apart from conventional future tense), building temporal-modal connections between future, present and past conceptual spaces. First, we classify future expressions along the axes of time (e.g. imminent or remote) (Bybee et al. 1994: 98-103) and modality (uncertain-unreal, possible-potential). Additionally we may show evidence of some more complex compositional patterns in which the bounded area of the future is coherently contrasted with other temporal zones, building the nexus of the future’s otherness with respect to representations of a different present or past. Our claim is, surprisingly, that the L2 constructional network produced (apart from occasional grammatical errors, missing or erroneous inflections or verbal deficit), may mirror and complement native speakers’ constructions of futurity. A more provocative question then is if and how we should connect interpretable L2 lingua franca patterns in an extended constructional view of a L1 model of language. References Berghs, A. 2010. Expressions of futurity in contemporary English: a Construction Grammar perspective. English Language and Linguistics 14(2): 217-238. Bertinetto P. M. 1991. Il verbo. In Renzi, L. & G. Salvi, Grande grammatica italiana di consultazione, 114-129. vol.II. Bologna: Il Mulino. 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