Grambank - Feature GB309: Are there multiple past or multiple future tenses, distinguishing distance from Time of Reference?

Feature GB309: Are there multiple past or multiple future tenses, distinguishing distance from Time of Reference?

Patrons: Hedvig Skirgård

Description ⇫

Summary

This question aims to capture productive marking of tense that makes distinctions into remoteness of time in relation to the point of reference or utterance. The actual marking can be tonal, verbal affixation, suppletion or any other means of marking.

This feature pertains to temporal marking, not aspectual. ‘Present perfect’ and ‘pluperfect’ are not included since they do not denote difference in distance of time but sequence of events.

Procedure

Look up the sections in the language description that deal with tense.
Check if there are markers of past or future tense at all.
If more than one function of future or past tense are described, and they are marked by separate forms, investigate whether the distinctions are aspectual or modal, or indeed relate to remoteness on the temporal axis.
If there is only a single past tense category and only a single future tense category, code the language as 0.
If it is unclear whether the distinction is aspectual/modal or temporal, code the language as ?.
If there are several function-form pairs described, but with little motivation and few examples to clearly explain what is going on, code the language as ?.
If it is clearly stated that the distinction has to do with remoteness of time, code the language as 1.

Examples

Sudest (ISO 639-3: tgo, Glottolog: sude1239)

In Sudest, there are distinctions in remoteness in both past and future tenses. Anderson & Ross (2002: 335–339) outline this in a paradigm and also give the examples below. Sudest is coded as 1 for this feature.

a. Va        thï=utu
DIST.PST  3PL=talk
‘They talked.’ (Anderson & Ross 2002: 339)

b. Methï=wa        e    la-ma         nggolo
PROX.PST.3PL=go PREP POSS-1EXCL.PL house
‘They went (today or yesterday) to my house.’ (Anderson & Ross 2002: 336)

c. Na       ya-wa 
PROX.FUT 1SG=go
‘They will go (today).’ (Anderson & Ross 2002: 337)

d. Ne   thï=kwaio
FUT  3PL=work
‘They will work (after today).’ (Anderson & Ross 2002: 337)

Below is a helpful excerpt on the typological literature on this phenomenon from Hayashi (2011: 46):

"Cross-linguistically, it is not rare for a language to have multiple past (or future) tenses that cover different temporal domains (Dahl 1983, 1985, 2008; Comrie 1985; Mithun 1999; Dahl & Velupillai 2005: 269).

When a language has two past tenses covering different temporal domains, the cut-off point (boundary) is most commonly placed between ‘today’ and ‘before today’, in which case the tenses can be labeled with Latinate terms as hodiernal past and pre-hodiernal past (Dahl 1983, 1985, 2008; Comrie 1985; Dahl & Velupillai 2005). Another common cut-off point is that between ‘recently’ and ‘longer ago’. When a language has more than two past tenses, additional cut-off points may be placed between ‘yesterday’ and ‘before yesterday’, between ‘a few days ago’ and ‘more than a few days ago’, between ‘this year’ and ‘before this year’, etc.

Comrie (1985) also points out that tense systems across languages may contrast with one another not only with respect to how they segment the time-line, but also with respect to how rigid the boundaries between the segments are. Haya, for example, has three past tenses covering ‘today’ (the hodiernal past), ‘yesterday’ (the hesternal past), and ‘before yesterday’ (the pre-hesternal past). Their boundaries are rigid, in the sense that the hodiernal past can never be used to describe a situation in a time prior to the day of utterance. Sotho, in contrast, has the opposition of ‘recently’ vs. ‘not recently’, where the boundary is fluid in the sense that what counts as recent is left to the speaker’s subjective impression; it is possible, thus, to describe an event that took place several years or decades ago with a recent past form, as long as the speaker intends to emphasize the subjective recency."

References

Anderson, Mike & Malcolm Ross. 2002. Sudest. In John Lynch, Malcolm Ross & Terry Crowley (eds), The Oceanic languages, 322–346. Richmond: Curzon.

Comrie, Bernard. 1985. Tense. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Dahl, Östen. 1983. Temporal distance: Remoteness distinctions in tense-aspect systems. Linguistics 21. 105–122.

Dahl, Östen. 1985. Tense and aspect systems. Oxford: Blackwell.

Dahl, Östen. 2008. The morning is wiser than the evening. Paper presented at Chronos 8: International conference on Tense, Aspect, Mood, and Modality.

Dahl, Östen & Viveka Velupillai. 2005. Tense and aspect. In Martin Haspelmath, Matthew S. Dryer, David Gil & Bernard Comrie (eds), World atlas of language structures, 266–272. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hayashi, Midori. 2011. The structure of multiple tenses in Inuktitut. University of Toronto. (Doctoral dissertation.)

Mithun, Marianne. 1999. The languages of native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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0	absent	1325
1	present	601
?	Not known	246

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Values ⇫

Name	Glottocode	Family	Macroarea	Contributor	Value	Source	Comment