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<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>It is
actually not so easy to say exactly when a language has "obligatory overt
TAM marking". Consider English. The present tense is in fact used quite
extensively both with future time reference (for instance "The train
leaves at eight") and past time reference (e.g. in narratives). To find
examples where the present is absolutely excluded, you have to choose specific
contexts, such as when there is also a deictic past time adverbial in the
sentence, e.g. "I was ill yesterday" where "I am ill
yesterday" is rather deviant. Looking at descriptions of
"exotic" languages, it is often hard to know to what extent the forms
and constructions listed are really obligatory. Having said this, I think it
can still be claimed with some confidence that the obligatoriness of TAM/TMA
marking is not contingent on literacy. Available evidence shows that there are
plenty of languages from all parts of the world where tense, mood and aspect
work quite analogously to what we find in "li! terate" languages.
Most of these do not have written forms or only very recently got them.
Remember that until one or two centuries ago the majority of the speakers of
European languages were illiterate, and in fact, many still speak non-standard
vernaculars that are not written. There is indeed nothing to suggest that
Sicilian in </span></font>Italy or Dalecarlian in Sweden differ in any
essential respect to the standard languages of those countries as far as TMA
marking goes. </p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>This does
not mean that there are no languages that are like Kuche. </span></font>Mikael Parkvall
mentioned Maybrat in Irian Jaya -- there are actually quite a few languages in
that area that have no or minimal TMA systems, and optionality is probably
quite widespread. Notice that there is really nothing strange in tense, mood,
and aspect not being universal as obligatory categories -- none of the
categories that are typically expressed inflectionally is universal, not even
in the sense that there must be a periphrastic counterpart (negation is a
possible exception, but it is quite different from the others in many
respects). </p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Janet</span></font>
Wilson says "Overt tense/aspect markers are used at the beginning of a
discourse, and those tense/aspect interpretations hold over long stretches of
discourse." -- This is something that tends to hold for
narratives in many languages, but I wonder if it can be extended to other
modes of discourse. Why would you use overt tense/aspect markers in the
beginning of a conversation rather than in the middle? </p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>I do not
think there is a good answer to the question "Why does TMA become
obligatory in a language?", at least not one that would make it possible
to predict in what languages it happens. Maybe linguists will find such an
answer some time in the future, but at that point they will probably also be
able to explain why French has nasal vowels and English doesn't.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>(I wrote
this last night when I did not have access to my usual mail account, and other
people may have had time to say similar things in the meantime.)</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>- Vsten
Dahl</span></font></p>
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