Non-Verbal Tense Marking

[W. Schulze]

Cher Claude,
dear Lingtypists,

it's good to have the discussion opened again. Claude's remarks draw (at
least my) attention to a crucial point, occasionally referred to in the
literature. Roland, too, has aluded to it in both his query and his
summary [hence, sorry for possible redundancies]. The point I want to
make here is related to the old question 'from form to function' or
'from function to form'. In other words: Do we have to say that NPs etc.
are marked for Tense/Mood etc. in case they are marked by a
corresponding morpheme that *also* appears with verbs and hence can be
safely described as for its Tende/Mood function? Or: Should we proceed
from function to form, asking for formal devices to encode a specific
type of NP Tense/Mood marking that is functionally independent from the
'propositional' Tense/Mood setting? Take Claude's example from Comox,
repeated here for convenience:

hégos-elh té'e (chief-PAST) this "this man was the chief".

The problem is that we (at least I) cannot decide whether the proximal
deixis is endophoric or exophoric. In case it is exophoric (the speaker
pointing as a certain person and informing others about his
'ex-chiefhood' (paraphrase: 'This *is* the man who *was* the chief) we
would have to deal with an NP internal scope of tense framing. In case
the function of té'e is endophoric (paraphrase: '[A certain man
*came*...]. This man *was* the chief'), we would have to deal with a
'propositional tense frame' (or wider scope of tense framing). I do not
know enough of Comox to decide this question, nevertheless the example
shows that ambiguity may arise especially if the Tense/Mood morpheme
used with an NP (or non-verbal constituent) is identical with a
Tense/Mood marker present with verbs. All this is naturally related to
the question of constituency and constituent vs. propositional 'focus'
(recall that Tense/Mood can be interpreted as some kind of focal
framing).

In addition, we should carefully observe whether a tensed NP occures in
an identificational (or: copular) clause or in clauses that contain a
non-copular verb. The paradigmatic restrictions that are often present
with copulas may condition that a strategy to mark identificational
clauses for Tense/Mood is 'exported' onto other constituents of the
clause. Hence, 'true' NP-internal Tense/Mood markers should be best
retrieved from non-copular clauses...

Now, if we have a Tense/Mood morphology of NPs that is different from
that of verbs, things are easier to decide, at least from a formal point
of view. Here, however, we face the problem that we lack the typical
'control instance', that is the Tense/Mood categorization suggested by a
verbal paradigm. In other words: It is much more difficult to assess the
functional scope of an idiosyncratic NP 'Tense/Mood' marker.

A good basis to decide whether we have to deal with an NP-internal
Tense/Mood category is to check a given phrase in different
propositional Tense/Mood frames, for instance (construed patterns):

The woman burn:PRES the tree:PAST in the fire (> firewood)
The woman burn:PAST the tree:PAST in the fire (tree ~ firewood)
The woman burn:FUT the tree:PAST in the fire (> firewood)
The woman prepare:PAST the tee:FUT (> tee)
The woman prepare:FUT the tee:FUT (> tee leaves ~ tee)

In other words: In case we have a continual 'consecutio temporum' (or
Tense/Mood coreference), ambiguity arises; in case we have a conflict of
scope, NP-internal Tense/Mood marking seems to be present. By the way,
the same holds for NP-internal possessive strategies:

This be:PRES my(:PAST) book:PAST (ex-possession)
This be:PAST my(:PAST) book:PAST (ex-possession/possesion)
This be:PAST my(:nPAST) book:nPAST (possession)

As far as I remember, such strategies are said to be present for
instance in Old Egyptian (New Old Egyptian, to be exact), although I
cannot  guarantee. Obviously, these strategies are related to the more
current pattern of 'temporary possession' (> alienability), cp.
(construed):

my arm:PAST  (???)
my car:PAST = my former car

The narrow scope of NP-internal Tense/Mood marking can also be seen from
a structure like (construed):

chief:past:p-or money:p-um [p-or = possessor, p-um = possessee]
'The money of the former chief', probably not 'the former money of the
(former) chief' or something the like....

In addition, it seems important to have a closer look at the semantics
of NPs marked for Tense/Mood: I assume that we have to start with an
'ontology' that includes a category of 'Ex-hood' or 'Future-hood' (I do
not have better terms at hands). By this I mean that concepts may be
marked for a feature of transience or transitoriness that accounts for
the fact that these concepts are related to a concept-*internal* time
scale. Other concepts may lack this feature, for instance the concepts
of EGO (first singular), sun, moon (?) etc. For instance, it will be
difficult to interpret

I:PAST go:PRES

in terms of NP-internal Tense marking (paraprase: What formerly was I
goes' (?)).

To sum up: I guess that NP-internal Tense/Mood marking is related to an
NP-internal time scale that is *different* from that of the clause. At
best, such NP-internal time frames are marked by a morphology *distinct*
from those used to encode a propositional (or: verbal) time frame. Here,
it would be good to know more about the grammaticalization of such
morphemes. Maybe that they are related to concepts of 'going' (past) and
'coming' (fut), or to 'death' (past) and 'birth' (fut) (compare German
'totes Holz' (dead wood) > (occasionally) > 'fallen twigs' >
'firewood'). Likewise, we may think of concepts like 'end' (past) and
'start' (fut) etc.

In case there is *no* morphological difference between verbal and NP
tense forms, we should draw our attention to those instances which are
marked by a 'broken consecutio temporum' (NP:PAST V:PRES etc.).

Very best wishes,

Wolfgang

--
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

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