A contrastive approach to temporal deixis in English, French and German

Abstract : The aim of this corpus-based study is to compare temporal deixis in English, French and German. The contrastive analysis of now, nun, jetzt, à présent, maintenant shows that reference to the time of utterance is governed by a distinction that may be drawn between strong deixis and weak deixis in French and German; some deictic markers separate an occurrence from other occurrences by locating it in aspecto-temporal terms, while others specify the occurrence by locating it relative to the interior of the notional domaini.e. to a prototype. The occurrence is evaluated as normal or expected by a subjective originthe enunciator or the coenunciator. In this respect French differs from both German and English because only the enunciator may function as deictic centre in French. 