More about differences in meaning between grammatical and lexical items

[Östen Dahl]

Discussion lists like LINGTYP offer the possibility of receiving instant
falsification of your speculative ideas. The other day, I asked for lexical
items with meanings that are commonly found in tense systems but which did
not seem to me to occur with lexical words. As it turns out, lexical items
with two of the meanings I asked for are quite common in at least two groups
of languages, viz.:

 

- from the point of speech to the end of the same day  [“past today”]

- from the beginning of the day of the speech act to the point of speech
[“future today”]  

 

Alex François says that among the languages of northern Vanuatu that he has
studied most have two distinct lexical items for this meaning. Similarly,
David Gil lists a number of Malayic languages which also have precisely such
pairs of words. 

 

One immediate observation is that all these languages are Austronesian. Can
anyone come up with examples from other language families?

 

Another observation is that the following meanings remain unattested:

 

- from the evening before the speech act to the point of speech [last night
+ past today]

- from the beginning of the day before the speech act to the point of speech
[yesterday + past today]

 

Tense systems in which such meanings are found may also exhibit tenses with
the following ranges of use, which I now add to the list of challenges --
can anyone find lexical items in a language which denote these time periods?

 

- from Big Bang to the beginning of the day before the speech act

- from Big Bang to the evening before the speech act

 

I had two further queries, one of which was also addressed by David Gil. The
third challenge remains unanswered: Is there a language with a tense which
can be used if and only if the event happened yesterday or will happen
tomorrow?

 

- Östen Dahl

 

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20080829/47242ec8/attachment.htm>