the influence of linguistic factors on the expression of futurity

THE EXPRESSION OF FUTURITY IN MARTINIQUE FRENCH 141
(3) a. Des fois on va rigoler avec le pr<strong>of</strong>esseur. [NOR]
‘Sometimes we’ll have a laugh with <strong>the</strong> teacher.’
b. Si par exemple tu sors avec la fille tu vas pas lui parler créole. [AUB]
‘If for example you are going out with a girl you wouldn’t speak to her in creole.’
c. Oui moi je vais voir si elle est là. [MAC]
‘Yes I am going to see if she is here.’
d. Va pas lui remplir la tête avec des bêtises. [JOU]
‘Don’t go filling his head with rubbish.’
e. Parce que si cela va recommencer peut-être on choisirait une autre formule. [ALB]
‘Because if that is going to happen again we’d perhaps choose ano<strong>the</strong>r option.’
Finally, tokens were excluded if <strong>the</strong>y had been primed by <strong>the</strong> interviewer; occurred in
fixed expressions, reported speech or meta<strong>linguistic</strong> commentary; were interrupted, repeated
or reformulated.
In total, 513 tokens that made unambiguous reference to future time were retained for
quantitative analysis. Each instance <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> variable was coded for a number <strong>of</strong> internal and
external constraints. In order to facilitate cross-dialectal comparison, this was achieved by
combining and refining <strong>the</strong> coding protocols developed in previous research on future
temporal reference. These are outlined in section 3.2 below.
3.2. Linguistic conditioning <strong>factors</strong>
The data were coded for a total <strong>of</strong> six <strong>linguistic</strong> factor groups: sentential polarity,
temporal reference, adverbial modification, grammatical person, <strong>the</strong> <strong>influence</strong> <strong>of</strong> si ‘if’, and
<strong>the</strong> presence or absence <strong>of</strong> quand ‘when’.
3.2.1. Sentential polarity
The effect <strong>of</strong> this factor group has been largely ignored by prescriptive grammars
(Poplack & Dion 2009). It is not operative in Acadian French (King & Nadasdi 2003,
Comeau 2011) or in o<strong>the</strong>r Romance languages, such as Brazilian Portuguese (Poplack &
Malvar 2007), Colombian (Orozco 2005), North American (Orozco 2007) or Peninsular
Spanish (Blas Arroyo 2008, Osborne 2008). Never<strong>the</strong>less, <strong>the</strong> polarity <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> future
eventuality has been identified in all Laurentian studies to be <strong>the</strong> greatest determinant <strong>of</strong>
variant choice. It has been operative since at least <strong>the</strong> 19 th century (Poplack & Dion 2009) and
has a near-categorical effect: affirmative contexts massively favour PF selection while
negative environments are reported to be one <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> last strongholds <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> IF (Poplack &
Turpin 1999, Blondeau 2006). Indeed, Wagner and Sank<strong>of</strong>f (2011: 285) report that in all 588
negative constructions identified in <strong>the</strong>ir combined 1971 and 1984 Montréal dataset, only two
were realised as <strong>the</strong> periphrastic variant and both <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong>se involved false starts, hesitations and
reformulations. Given <strong>the</strong> <strong>influence</strong> <strong>of</strong> this constraint, I coded all tokens as ei<strong>the</strong>r affirmative
(4a) or negative (4b).
(4) a. Il faudra faire un tour au Centre de Découverte de la Terre. [MAE]
‘You will have to visit <strong>the</strong> Centre de Découverte de la Terre.’
b. Ça ne va plus se reproduire. [MAN]
‘That is not going to happen again.’
In Roberts (2012), I identified a link between <strong>the</strong> type <strong>of</strong> negation and variant choice
in Hexagonal French. I <strong>the</strong>refore also decided to operationalise polarity as a four-way