The Paraguayan Guaran í future marker -ta

[Gabriel de Ávila Othero]

The Paraguayan Guaraní future marker -ta:
Formal semantics and cross-linguistic comparison
By Judith Tonhauser
http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/~judith/Tonhauser-TAL.pdf

To conclude, future markers differ cross-linguistically in (i) which modal meanings they
are compatible with (or entail), and (ii) whether future time reference is entailed or not.
Comparing the temporal and modal meanings of English will/would, St'át'imcets kelh and
Guaraní -ta shows that the meaning of -ta is the most restrictive of these future markers
since -ta, unlike will/would, entails future time reference and is only compatible with the
modal meanings of intention and prediction/expectation, and, unlike kelh, only has
universal quantificational force. Thus, exploring the semantics of Guaraní -ta has
revealed yet another way in which future time reference and modal meaning can be
bundled together in a natural language future marker. This result from Guaraní contributes to our (growing) picture of what is (im)possible in (future) temporal and modal reference in natural languages. Many more detailed formal semantic studies of future markers in a typologically diverse set of languages are needed, however, to develop truly crosslinguistic theories of (temporal) semantics and assess the cross-linguistic applicability of existing theories.

to appear in R. Musan & M. Rathert (eds.) Tense Across Languages
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