the influence of linguistic factors on the expression of futurity

THE EXPRESSION OF FUTURITY IN MARTINIQUE FRENCH 143
(7) a. Au mois de juin j’aurai 19 ans. [TEM]
‘In June I will be 19 years old.’
b. Et tu vas revenir ici après? [CLU]
‘And are you going to come back here afterwards?’
c. Comme il y a une seule école donc je vais faire une demande ici. [KAG]
‘As <strong>the</strong>re is only one school I am going to apply here.’
3.2.4. Certainty
The research literature indicates that <strong>the</strong> certainty <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> outcome <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> future
eventuality may also impact upon variant choice: PF ought to be selected when <strong>the</strong> state or
event is deemed certain to occur and IF is linked to doubtful outcomes (Franckel 1984).
Coding for <strong>the</strong> degree <strong>of</strong> certainty is extremely difficult and highly subjective. There is no one
perfect approach for operationalising this factor group. This is because subtle semantic or
pragmatic distinctions in <strong>the</strong> message <strong>the</strong> speaker wishes to convey cannot be easily identified
in <strong>the</strong> absence <strong>of</strong> overt contextual cues. Never<strong>the</strong>less, <strong>the</strong> presence <strong>of</strong> adverbials, such as bien
sûr ‘<strong>of</strong> course’ or peut-être ‘maybe’, facilitate <strong>the</strong> decision-making process. Tokens were
<strong>the</strong>refore coded as ei<strong>the</strong>r certain (8a), uncertain (8b) or unknown (8c).
(8) a. On va certainement apprendre à jouer au piano. [JOU]
‘We will definitely learn how to play <strong>the</strong> piano.’
b. Je vais peut-être continuer ou je vais directement changer de filière. [VAV]
‘I am perhaps going to carry on or I am going to completely change my course <strong>of</strong>
study.’
c. Moi je pense qu’il va rester. [JUF]
‘I think that he is going to stay.’
3.2.5. Grammatical person
A number <strong>of</strong> different postulates regarding grammatical person have been shown to
<strong>influence</strong> variant selection. For instance, <strong>the</strong> use <strong>of</strong> formal vous to a singular addressee (also
known as vouvoiement) is linked to <strong>the</strong> inflected future (Poplack & Turpin 1999, Wagner &
Sank<strong>of</strong>f 2011, Roberts 2012), while PF is viewed as more subjective and <strong>the</strong>refore more
likely to occur with first person subjects (Söll 1983, Grimm 2010). In light <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong>se findings,
tokens <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> variable were coded for all grammatical persons, both singular and plural, some
examples <strong>of</strong> which are given in (9a–c). For analytic purposes, <strong>the</strong>se were collapsed in various
ways (as detailed in section 4.1).
(9) a. Ensuite ben nous on sera en période d’examen tout de suite après. [NOR]
‘Then well we will be in <strong>the</strong> exam period straight after.’
b. Il paraît qu’il va y avoir une pénurie de riz. [CHL]
‘It seems that <strong>the</strong>re is going to be a shortage <strong>of</strong> rice.’
c. Et vous allez voir un petit peu les communes qui nous entourent. [JOB]
‘And you are going to see a little bit <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> towns that surround us.’
3.2.6. Influence <strong>of</strong> si ‘if’
Previous studies identify contingency as a factor constraining <strong>the</strong> variation with <strong>the</strong>
inflected future preferred with contingent events (Poplack & Turpin 1999, Blondeau 2006,