Subject and time in French grammars (XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries)

Abstract

This article discusses how the French grammars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries introduced the question of the subject in language through the theorization of linguistic time. More specifically, the discussion focuses on the model of temporal semantics described in Grammaire générale et raisonnée (1660) and on formal procedures for the analysis of time devised by the authors of this famous text. One of the characteristic aspects of the authors’ procedures is the introduction of the notion of the subject’s ‘point of view’ about the process.