La concurrence entre voir + infinitif et voir en train de + infinitif

Abstract

If we admit with P. Le Goffic (1993 : 277-278. Translation mine) that "the construction with infinitive is the normal expression of perception (effective and imaginary)", the fact remains that the current language trend [in French] deviates significantly from the correct usage adopted in French normative grammar. This is particularly the case of the verb voir ("to see") which, while being "the only verb to present almost the whole range of AO [attributes of the object]" (D. Willems and B. Defrancq, 2000 : 10), is not supposed, normatively speaking, to accept durative complementation ("en train de"). However, this construction is attested and seems to be in competition with the infinitive one. Our approach is based on corpus data and aims to answer the following question : could the durative complementation be a (simple) combinatorial variant ?