The French gerund in the position before the main verb : what relationship with the left context and the right context ?
2013
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to analyze the meaning and the information status of the French gerund in the position before the main verb. We hold that its relationship with the context on the left defines its information status, whereas the context on the right determines its meaning.
We examine especially the consequences of the extrapredicative status of this verbal form in the anteposition, but using large electronic corpora (FRANTEXT), we pay attention also to its less frequent variants, such as tout + gérondif, gerund in the cleft construction or cases of non-coreference of the agent of the gerund with the subject of the main clause. Czech equivalents are also taken into account to provide a contrastive perspective.