Pronouns: temporal paradigms

[Rachel Nordlinger]

Dear Dan and others,

Regarding the recent thread on tense-marked nouns (and pronouns,
demonstratives etc.),  Louisa Sadler (Essex) and I have recently been
working on various aspects of this issue, including an attempt to
sketch out the range of typological variation -- whether the nominal
tense (also aspect and mood) marking temporally situations the
clausal predicate (our 'propositional nominal TAM') or whether it
temporally situates the nominal itself ('non-propositional nominal
TAM').  Examples of the former type include the Chamicuro definite
articles that Frans Plank mentioned in an earlier message (Parker
1999), modal case in Kayardild (Evans 1995), mood-encoding
pronominals in Supyire (Carlson 1994) and case/tense portmanteau
suffixes in Pitta Pitta (Blake 1979). Examples of the latter include
the Guarani examples provided by Paul Hopper, in which the tense
marker temporally locates the nominal itself independently of the
clause (similar in function to the adjectives 'past' and 'future' in
the English phrases 'the past president', 'the future president').
The Wari demonstratives are probably another example of this type.

If anyone is interested, our findings are written up in a paper
currently under review -- a draft form is downloadable from
http://www.linguistics.unimelb.edu.au/contact/staff/rachel/tam.pdf.
We would, of course, be interested in any feedback, comments, further
data etc.

Cheers,

Rachel

>Matthew,
>
>Thanks for these examples. I wasn't aware of them. I know that Guarani
>has some tense marking on nouns, but I cannot remember the exact
>details. They are probably in Jorge Suarez's grammar and I was going to
>be looking at that, but I also know that the Guarani facts are unlike
>the Wari facts. Tupi-Guarani languages do have a '4th person' pronoun
>which can involve tense or discourse focus (reminiscent of 'obviative').
>Aryon Rodrigues describes one manifestation of that, in Tupinamba, in
>his chapter of Doris Payne's Amazonian Linguistics.
>
>-- Dan
>
>.........................
>Dan Everett
>Professor of Phonetics and Phonology
>Department of Linguistics
>Arts Building
>University of Manchester
>Oxford Road
>M13 9PL
>Manchester, UK
>dan.everett at man.ac.uk
>Phone: 44-161-275-3158
>Dept. Fax and Phone: 44-161-275-3187
>http://lings.ln.man.ac.uk/info/staff/de
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Discussion List for ALT [mailto:LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG]
>On Behalf Of Matthew Dryer
>Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2003 1:28 AM
>To: LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
>Subject: Re: Pronouns: temporal paradigms
>
>
>This isn't exactly what Dan was asking for, but Cebuano has a set of
>demonstrative words that function as predicates and that vary for four
>possible values of distance, based on the four possible combinations of
>+/-near speaker, +/-near hearer, which also vary for tense (past vs.
>present vs. future), with meanings like "X is here".  They are also used
>in combination with locative expressions to predicate location.  Thus
>"He is in Manila" will employ the appropriate demonstrative word (such
>as the one for not near speaker and not near hearer, if neither of them
>is in Manila). Interestingly, verbs in Cebuano do not vary for tense, so
>these demonstrative words are clearly not verbs (although they occur in
>the predicate position in which verbs appear).  This set of words also
>includes three interrogative words, one for each tense (e.g. "Where was
>he?")  See Wolff (1966: 42) for details.
>
>Wolff, John V. 1966.  Beginning Cebuano, Part 1.    New Haven: Yale
>University Press.
>
>Matthew Dryer


***************************************************

Dr. Rachel Nordlinger
Dept. of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
University of Melbourne
Victoria 3010
AUSTRALIA
ph. +61-(0)3-8344-4227, fax. +61-(0)3-8344-8990
http://www.linguistics.unimelb.edu.au/contact/staff/nordlinger.html