The Decline of the French Passé Simple

Know about the book -

The Decline of the French Passé Simple is written by Emmanuelle Labeau and published by BRILL. It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 9004463348 (ISBN 10) and 9789004463349 (ISBN 13).

The disappearance of the French simple past has been hotly debated since the early 20th century. This volume offers an overview of its fortunes since French emerged as a language, provides a description of its distinctive features, and discusses the potential impact of its supposed demise on the whole French verb system. These assumptions are tested against a large corpus of contemporary texts. The study concludes that, despite the erosion of its meaning and its increasingly infrequent use, the simple past tense is still used by native speakers in various contexts, and no single substitute has yet emerged. Nevertheless, the simple past may be evolving into a stylistic marker, making it fertile ground for future cross-linguistic studies.