Tense Marker on Nouns

[Hans-Jürgen Sasse]

Matthew Dryer's type-3 tense marking on nouns occurs in Cayuga (Northern
Iroquoian) where one uses a past tense suffix on nouns to indicate 'the
former X', e.g. chair-past 'the former chair, that which used to be a
chair'. This usage is found in all positions, not just in bona fide
predicative positions. However, the question of whether an analysis of
all "nouns" in this language as predicative makes sense is still a
matter of dispute among Iroquoianists. In 1988 I had advanced a
hypothesis to this effect, which was severely criticized by some of the
colleagues.
It should be added that there are several ways to express "tensed
nominals" in Cayuga, depending of the morphological type of the
equivalent of our nouns.If the nominal root occurs incorporated in one
of the conventionalized "classificatory" position or existence verbs,
the entire paradigm of tense/mood inflection  may be applied (given that
the expression in question is basically verbal). For example, the usual
way of referring to a path is oha:te' ('it-path-exists'). From this,
past, future, optative, etc., can be regulary formed: past tense
oha:tehk 'there used to be a path' (in predicative use) or 'the former
path' (when used as an argument), future Eyohate:k 'there will be a
path'/'the future path', etc. Similarly, tkanOhso:t
('over-there-it-house-stands') 'house', tkanOhso:ta'k 'there used to be
a house, the former house', etc.
In other cases, one adds a special past tense suffix -kEhE:', e.g.
kanyo:ta' 'spoon', kanyota'kEhE:' 'former spoon'. Equivalents of this
suffix are called 'decessive suffix' in Iroquoianist literature, because
this suffix is mainly used with humans to express the idea that the
person referred to has passed away (this is not the case in Cayuga where
it is also used as a regular past tense suffix in the verbal paradigm;
it marks the regular past tense of the habitual aspect of verbs
belonging to the s-habitual verb classes). The 'decessive' meaning is
probably more archaic than the past tense meaning since the suffix was
grammaticalized from a form of the verb 'to die'.

(E and O in the examples represent nasal e and o.)

Hans-Juergen Sasse
Institut fuer Sprachwissenschaft
Universitaet zu Koeln
D-50923 Koeln
Germany