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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif"">Dear Artem and Randy – I’d like to point out that the common characterization of Mandarin as tenseless may depend on the assumption, which happens to be widespread in Generative circles as it was apparently
endorsed by Chomsky long ago, that there is no such thing as a true future tense, as futures are really modal or mood operators.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif"">I happen to consider future tenses real, and to me it looks like Taiwanese Mandarin may have grammaticalized a future vs. non-future tense contrast.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif"">Consider the following examples (courtesy of Yen-Ting Lin, who should not be held accountable for my analysis
</span><span style="font-family:"Apple Color Emoji"">😉</span><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif"">). (1) serves as a diagnostic context for future time reference in Dahl (1985). The marker _<i>huì</i>_ is not omissible in this context. The anomalous continuation
in (2) shows that the sentence in (1) conveys epistemic certainty. However, my sense is that this is not expressed by _<i>huì</i>_, but is a conversational implicature. Consider (3), which shows that the _<i>huì</i>_ clause can be embedded under a predicate
of doubt.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif"">(1) [QUESTION: What your brother DO if you don't go to see him today, do you think? ANSWER:]<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""> <i>Tā </i>
<b>(*/<i>huì</i>)<i> </i></b><i> (gěi wŏ) xiĕ</i><b>(*<i>-le</i>)</b><i> xìn </i><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""> He <b>FUT
</b> to I write<b>-PRV</b> letter <br>
‘He will write a letter (to me).’ <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif"">(2) #… dàn wŏ bú quèdìng<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""> but I not certain<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""> ‘… but I’m not certain (that he will).’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif"">(3) Wŏ huáiyí tā (*/huì) xiĕ xìn.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""> I doubt he
<b>FUT </b>write<i> </i>letter<i> </i><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""> ‘I doubt that he’ll write a letter.’
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif"">Best – Juergen<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black">Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">-- <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="DE" style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="DE" style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<b><span style="color:black">From: </span></b><span style="color:black">Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of randylapolla via Lingtyp <lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org><br>
<b>Date: </b>Tuesday, July 29, 2025 at 01:23<br>
<b>To: </b>Sergey Loesov <sergeloesov@gmail.com><br>
<b>Cc: </b>LINGTYP@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG <lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org><br>
<b>Subject: </b>Re: [Lingtyp] once again about perfective vs. imperfective aspect<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in">Hi Sergey,<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in">Not just Chinese (i.e. Mandarin), but most of Sinitic and Sino-Tibetan “encodes only aspectual meanings, with tense always inferred pragmatically as an implicature .”<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in">The controversies come up when made up sentences rather than natural data in context are used, and so it is easy to “show” tense distinctions that are actually just the pragmatic implicatures you mentioned. <o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in">Cross-linguistically there is also poor understanding of the difference between tense and aspect, and so, for example, English “going to/gonna” is talked about as tense. <o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in">Randy<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in">On Tue, Jul 29, 2025 at 4:13 AM, Sergey Loesov via Lingtyp <<a href="mailto:On%20Tue,%20Jul%2029,%202025%20at%204:13%20AM,%20Sergey%20Loesov%20via%20Lingtyp%20%3c%3ca%20href=">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>>
wrote:<o:p></o:p></p>
<blockquote style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-bottom:5.0pt">
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in">Sure, Chinese seems to be a parade example of this feature in the literature
<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in">On Mon, 28 Jul 2025, 22:57 Artem Fedorinchyk, <
<a href="mailto:artem.fedorinqyk@gmail.com" target="_blank">artem.fedorinqyk@gmail.com</a>> wrote:
<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in">Maybe Chinese is not the best example in terms of coding aspects but not tenses but it comes quite close.
<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in">On Mon, 28 Jul 2025 at 20:42, Sergey Loesov via Lingtyp <
<a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>> wrote:
<o:p></o:p></p>
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<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Dear Christian,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial">
<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black">Thanks you for your message! Indeed, German is well known for lacking grammatical aspect. But are there languages whose verbal morphology (along with productive periphrastic constructions) encodes
only aspectual meanings, with tense always inferred pragmatically as an implicature?</span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial">
<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black">Best,</span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial">
<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black">Sergey</span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in">On Sun, 27 Jul 2025 at 19:21, Christian Lehmann via Lingtyp <
<a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>> wrote:
<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p style="margin-left:.5in">Dear Sergey,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in">you may wish to specify your question. First of all, there are languages without any aspect at all, e.g. German. Second, there are languages with more than two aspects at the same morphological level, e.g. Yucatec Maya. So what exactly
is the question?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in">Cheers, Christian<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in">----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in">Am 27.07.2025 um 17:20 schrieb Sergey Loesov via Lingtyp:
<o:p></o:p></p>
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<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Dear colleagues,</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:8.0pt;margin-left:.5in">
<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Please allow me a naïve question: do we believe in a one-feature binary opposition of “perfective” vs. “imperfective” aspect in languages that, unlike English (e.g., yesterday he wrote ~ yesterday he was writing)
or Spanish (ayer escribió ~ ayer estaba escribiendo), do not exhibit a clear-cut morphological distinction of this kind within the same tense, if I may put it as simply as possible?</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Thank you very much!</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:8.0pt;margin-left:.5in">
<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Sergey</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<br>
<o:p></o:p></p>
<pre style="margin-left:.5in">_______________________________________________<o:p></o:p></pre>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in">-- <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann<br>
Rudolfstr. 4<br>
99092 Erfurt<br>
<span style="font-variant:small-caps">Deutschland</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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