the influence of linguistic factors on the expression of futurity

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NICHOLAS S. ROBERTS
Wagner & Sank<strong>of</strong>f 2011). In most cases in French, contingency is indicated by a conditional
si ‘if’ + present + future sequence. In order to test this hypo<strong>the</strong>sis, tokens were coded
according to whe<strong>the</strong>r <strong>the</strong>y occurred in <strong>the</strong> apodosis <strong>of</strong> a si-clause (10a) or not (10b).
(10) a. Si j’ai besoin d’un truc je n’irai pas au Conseil Général. [WIP]
‘If I need something I will not go to <strong>the</strong> Conseil Général.’
b. Donc je pense que je vais partir aux États-Unis ou en Europe. [LUJ]
‘So basically I think that I am going to leave for <strong>the</strong> US or Europe.’
3.2.7. Presence or absence <strong>of</strong> quand ‘when’
Finally, <strong>the</strong> favouring effect <strong>of</strong> interrogative quand ‘when’ for IF selection has been
hypo<strong>the</strong>sised to be operative in speech (Chevalier 1996). This claim has subsequently been
substantiated with data from both Acadian (King & Nadasdi 2003) and Laurentian French
(Wagner & Sank<strong>of</strong>f 2011). Consequently, occurrences <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> variable were coded for <strong>the</strong>
presence (11a) or absence (11b) <strong>of</strong> quand ‘when’.
(11) a. Quand je serai grande je mangerai beaucoup de bonbons. [ORT]
‘When I’m older I will eat lots <strong>of</strong> sweets.’
b. C’est magnifique et vous allez voir le Morne Vert. [JOB]
‘It’s magnificent and you are going to see Morne Vert.’
4. Results and analysis
The overall distribution <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> inflected and periphrastic future variants in Martinique
French is provided in Table 1. Table 1 shows that in Martinique <strong>the</strong>re is a marked preference
for <strong>the</strong> PF in spoken French: it is selected in 72.3% (N=371) <strong>of</strong> all potential occurrences. In
contrast, IF is employed only 27.7% <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> time (N=142).
Table 1: Distribution <strong>of</strong> IF and PF future variants in Martinique French
Variant N %
Inflected future 142 27.7
Periphrastic future 371 72.3
Total 513 100.0
All <strong>the</strong> variable tokens were subsequently submitted to multiple logistic regression
analyses using <strong>the</strong> program Rbrul (Johnson 2009) in order to determine which <strong>linguistic</strong>
constraints, outlined in section 3.2, contribute to variant choice at a statistically significant
level. The results <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> various models will now be presented and detailed.
4.1. Linguistic <strong>factors</strong>
The outcome <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> fixed-effect regression analysis, with <strong>the</strong> PF set as <strong>the</strong> application
value, is shown in Table 2. In total three <strong>linguistic</strong> factor groups were retained by <strong>the</strong> model
as statistically significant: temporal distance, grammatical person and adverbial specification.