Tense marking on NPs

Tue Jan 20 18:08:05 UTC 2004

Re. Roland Hemmauer's queston (with thanks for this very interesting data, 
and the hope that he will join our group!): There is some discussion of 
tensed NPs with Guaraní data in:

Claude Boisson et al., "Problématiques des parties du discours" in Louis 
Basset and M. Pérennec, eds., Les classes du mot: traditions et 
perspectives. Lyons: Presses Universitaires, 1994.

Obviously this is still in the Tupi-Guaraní family, so it may not add 
anything new to Roland's question. The idea that all NPs contain tense in 
their "deep structure" was examined as a theoretical question by Emmon Bach 
in the 1960s ("Nouns and Noun Phrases", in E Bach and R Harms, eds., 
Universals in Linguistic Theory, UT Press, 1968.)

- Paul

--On Tuesday, January 20, 2004 17:18 +0100 "W. Schulze" 
<W.Schulze at LRZ.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE> wrote:

> Dear colleagues,
>
> please allow me to forward you a question that has been sent to me by
> Roland Hemmauer. Roland is not yet a member of the Lingtyp forum.
> Best regards,
> Wolfgang
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> Roland Hemmauer (roland.hemmauer at gmx.de) wrote:
>
> Dear LingTyp members,
>
> as I am currently writing my M.A. thesis about tense marking on NPs
> in Tupi-Guaranian languages of Lowland South America, I would like
> to learn whether there are any other languages of the world that ex-
> hibit the same or a similar phenomenon.
>
> In order to sketch the problem briefly, I shall give the following
> example taken from Paraguayan Guarani:
>
>    ka'a               r-ogue-kué-gui             o-jej-apo
> hey'u  porã-rã
>    yerba mate  LNK-leaf-PAST-ABL  3:S-PASS-make  tea      good-FUT
>
>    "From the leaves of the yerba mate tree, a good tea can be made"
>
>    (LNK = a linker indicating possessive relations on some nouns)
>
> In this utterance, the 'leaves' are marked for past tense, as they will
> be "ex-leaves" (leaves detached from their tree) once entering the pro-
> cess of making tea. Conversely, the 'tea' is marked for future tense, as
>
> it will be "future tea" only resulting from the production process. (The
>
> verbal predicate itself is unmarked for tense in this example).
>
> Virtually all Tupi-Guaranian languages share this ability to mark noun
> phrases (NPs) for tense, (seemingly) independently from the tense mark-
> ing occuring on the predicate, thus creating some notion of an internal
> temporal structure of an event and of the exact temporal status of the
> referential entities involved in it (formally, NPs).
>
> My question, in a nutshell, is then:
>
> Are there any other languages that have means to mark referential NPs
> for tense, thus putting the referential entities represented by them
> into their own temporal relations? If yes, what are the factors con-
> ditioning this phenomenon? Possible questions include:
>
> - syntactic/semantic scope of nominal tense marking? (e.g. single noun,
>    whole NP, possessive relation, whole utterance,...)
>
> - syntactic/semantic restrictions on nominal tense marking? (e.g. sub-
>    ject/object, S/A/O, core/periphery, (in-)alienability, human/animate/
>
>    inanimate/mass/abstract,...)
>
> - relations to the semantic content of the (verbal or other) predicate?
>    (e.g. state/process/action, achievement, accomplishment,...)
>
> - relations to the tense/aspect/mood of the predicate? (e.g. past/pre-
>    sent/future as a reference point, perfective/imperfective, negation,
>    real vs. irreal, evidential,...)
>
> - possible by-functions of the formal means of marking nominal tense?
>    (e.g. derivation of collective or instrumental nouns, aspect marking,
>
>    case marking,...)
>
> Up to the moment, I am only aware of the notion of 'nominal aspect' (in-
>
> dividual vs. mass nouns) and of the existence of a so-called 'modal case
>
> system' in Kayardild, a language of Australia. Yet, aspect and mood are
> not what I'm primarily looking for. - The phenomenon in question should
> function as tense in the first place (in the sense of locating an enti-
> ty in time relative to a temporal reference point).
>
> It should be added that I don't mean a system of "floating" tense mark-
> ing here, where genuine verbal tense markers can be attached also to NPs
> in order to mark focus (as also found in Paraguayan Guarani), nor a
> system of tense concord, where other constituents of a sentence must
> agree in tense with the verb (e.g. adverbial temporal concord as found
> in Malagasy).
>
> Thank you very much in advance for your hints to languages that share
> this phenomenon! If it is customary to post a summary to the list, I
> shall do so once I have collected a reasonable number of answers.
>
> Kind regards
> Roland Hemmauer
> IATS / Univ. Munich
> roland.hemmauer at gmx.de
>
> ********************************************
> --
> Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze
> Institut für Allgemeine und Typologische Sprachwissenschaft
> Department 'Kommunikation und Sprachen' (Dep. II) - F 13/14
> Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
> Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1
> D-80539 München
> Tel.: ++49(0)89-2180-2486 (Sekr.) / -5343 (Büro)
> Fax: ++49(0)89-2180-5345
> Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de
> Web: http://www.ats.uni-muenchen.de/wschulze
>

---------------------------
Paul Hopper
Paul Mellon Distinguished Professor of the Humanities
College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA
Telephone (412) 268-7174
Fax (412) 268-7989