Martin Becker (Köln)
The Romance Imperfect in free indirect discourse and quotative (evidental) readings
In my talk I will discuss and analyse the peculiarities of tense use in Free Indirect Discourse (FID) in Romance languages. Especially, I will focus on the employment of the imperfect in these contexts, highlighting that the form has to be interpreted differently from its preterite counterparts in FID contexts in English or German. In order to substantiate and broaden my analysis, I will compare the function of the imperfect in FID with its role played in another very specific context, namely in so-called quotative (or quotative-evidential) readings in Spanish and in Italian (where they are more restricted). The following example is a typical instance of the quotative reading in Italian:
Verrà anche Gianni alla festa di domani?
(Will Gianni come as well to tomorrow’s party?)
Non so. Domani usciva con Maria.
(I do not know. Tomorrow he went out (IMP) (= is supposed to go out) with Maria).
The discussion of the similarities and differences of the two very specialized uses/readings will cast new light on the semantics and, more precisely, on the main semantic features of the Romance Imperfect. It will be shown, on the one hand, how these features derive from its aspectual nature and, on the other hand, how they interact with different contextual items.