À nouveau and de nouveau in spoken and written French

Abstract: This paper analyzes the alternation between the near-synonymous French adverbials à nouveau and de nouveau ‘again’, which has received scarce attention in the literature. While previous descriptions assume that both adverbials are used to express that an eventuality is repeated, it is shown that de nouveau and à nouveau differ systematically with respect to their preferred usage contexts. On the basis of combined results from a questionnaire that tests speakers’ intuitions and a probabilistic analysis of the alternation between the two adverbials in corpus data, à nouveau is shown to be more likely to express a repetitive meaning, whereas de nouveau is more likely to express a restitutive meaning, i.e. the return to a previous state of affairs. The analysis also suggests that due to its status of an innovative variant that is gradually displacing de nouveau, à nouveau is less restricted regarding its usage contexts. Finally, a significant difference between the two variants is found regarding modality, in that the use of à nouveau is more likely in written language, whereas the use of de nouveau is more likely in spoken language

Standort
Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
Umfang
Online-Ressource
Sprache
Englisch
Anmerkungen
Journal of French language studies. - 32, 1 (2022) , 76-104, ISSN: 1474-0079

Ereignis
Veröffentlichung
(wo)
Freiburg
(wer)
Universität
(wann)
2021
Urheber

DOI
10.1017/S0959269521000120
URN
urn:nbn:de:bsz:25-freidok-2232025
Rechteinformation
Open Access; Der Zugriff auf das Objekt ist unbeschränkt möglich.
Letzte Aktualisierung
25.03.2025, 13:46 MEZ

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Beteiligte

Entstanden

  • 2021

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