De Saussure, Louis

2015, Morency, Patrick, De Saussure, Louis, Chilton, Paul, Gosselin, Laurent, Rocci, Andrea

Using temporal expressions to indicate relations other than temporal ones is a well-documented phenomenon. This study aims to tackle the problem from a procedural pragmatic perspective, an approach that considers that certain expressions – temporal adverbs and connectives in this case – encode instructions guiding the addressee to infer the relevant relations between the constituent parts of utterances to obtain the most appropriate interpretation. Here, a dozen English and French temporal expressions are described and analyzed with the aim of understanding how and why they could be used non-temporally, and proposing a general outline for the type of procedure such expressions could encode.