[Lingtyp] Non-present lexemes

Fri Dec 2 15:23:08 UTC 2022

Dear Tom,

Modern French has *tout à l'heure*  /tutalœr/, which can mean

   - “a while ago, earlier today” when combined with past TAM:
   *Je l'ai entendu tout à l'heure à la radio.*
   'I heard it on the radio *earlier today*  .'

   - “in a while, later today” when combined with future TAM:
   *Je pourrai lui en parler **tout à l'heure**.*
   'I can tell her *later today*.'

However, *tout à l'heure* may not refer to the present tense  (**elle est
au téléphone tout à l'heure*.)

Incidentally, this is a contrast between Modern French and Classical
(17th-century) French, where “tout à l'heure” could mean 'right now'.
Witness, this famous line in Molière's  *L'Avare* (acte I, scène 3
<https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Moli%C3%A8re_-_L%E2%80%99Avare_1669.djvu/25#:~:text=Hors%20d%E2%80%99ici%20tout%20%C3%A0%20l%E2%80%99heure%2C%20et%20qu%E2%80%99on%20ne%20r%C3%A9plique%20pas>),
dated 1668:

   - *Hors d’ici tout à l’heure, et qu’on ne réplique pas !*
   'Go away *right now*, and do not say a word!'

The latter turn of phrase sounds odd to modern ears. In today's French, *tout
à l'heure* necessarily implies a temporal distance from the immediate
present, either in the recent past or in the near future.

best
Alex
------------------------------

Alex François
LaTTiCe <http://www.lattice.cnrs.fr/en/alexandre-francois/> — CNRS–
<http://www.cnrs.fr/index.html>ENS
<https://www.ens.fr/laboratoire/lattice-langues-textes-traitements-informatiques-et-cognition-umr-8094>
–Sorbonne nouvelle
<http://www.univ-paris3.fr/lattice-langues-textes-traitements-informatiques-cognition-umr-8094-3458.kjsp>
Australian National University
<https://researchers.anu.edu.au/researchers/francois-a>
Personal homepage <http://alex.francois.online.fr/>
_________________________________________

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Seino van Breugel <seinobreugel at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2022 at 14:52
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Non-present lexemes
To: LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG <LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org>

Dear Tom,

In Hindi, the word *कल */kal/ means both 'today' and 'yesterday'.

I Dutch, the exprssions *eens / een keer *can both refer to an unknown
point of time in the past or future.
Verbs in Dutch can indicate past or non-past tense. The non-past tense can
be interpreted as referring to either present or future time. However, when
one of these expressions is used with the non-past tense, the
interpretation can only be future time.
Examples of Dutch:
Er was *eens *een prinses. 'Once upon a time, there was a princess.'
Ik wil *eens* naar Zwitserland met vakantie gaan. 'One day, I want to go on
holiday in Switzerland.'
Ik was* een keer* in een kroeg, en toen werd er gevochten. 'Once, I was in
a pub, and people were fighting.'
Ik kom *een keer* bij je eten. 'One day, I'll come and have dinner at your
place.'

Met vriendelijke groet / Kind regards,

Seino

On Fri, Dec 2, 2022 at 2:36 PM Mike Klein <kdogg36 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Tom,
>
> Mandarin adverb 最近 (zuìjìn) can mean either “recently” or “in the near
> future,” but not “now.”
>
> Mike Klein
> Ph.D., George Mason University
>
> On Fri, Dec 2, 2022 at 6:15 AM Tom Koss <Tom.Koss at uantwerpen.be> wrote:
>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> I’m looking for any kind of linguistic item (TMA markers, particles,
>> adverbials etc.) that can convey both past- and future-time reference but
>> that do not appear in present contexts.
>>
>> The items I’m looking for do not have to be “non-present tense” markers
>> in the strict sense, i.e., bound morphemes which have non-present time
>> reference as their core meaning - even though this would be most
>> interesting of course. They can also be more loosely connected to the verb
>> phrase, have additional, more specific meanings, and/or be compatible with
>> other tense markers.
>>
>> The only criterion is that the items in question allow for both past and
>> future interpretations of the clauses they appear in (the choice between
>> the two depending on non-linguistic or grammatical context), while a
>> present interpretation is generally *not* possible. I would also be
>> interested in languages where the expression of a certain grammatical
>> category is similar in the past and future tense(s), while the present
>> tense behaves differently in some way (see e.g. the Awa Pit example below).
>>
>>
>> Below are a few examples for the phenomenon I am referring to:
>>
>>    - Nez Perce (Sahaptian) has a lexeme *watiisx *‘one day away’ that
>>    can mean ‘tomorrow’ or ‘yesterday’, depending on the tense marking in the
>>    respective clause (Deal 2010: 120). The same thing seems to happen with the
>>    lexeme *kel *in Hindi (Indo-Aryan) (Kachru 1997: 95) and with *ejo *in
>>    Kinyarwanda (Bantu) (Nkusi 1995: 580). All three languages have
>>    separate lexemes meaning ‘today’.
>>    - The lexeme *hibajata* in Jarawara (Arawá) is interpreted as ‘later
>>    today’ in the absence of tense marking, and as ‘just now’ in
>>    combination with the immediate past marker *-ra *(Dixon 2004: 224).
>>    There are no examples given where it is translated as ‘right now’ or ‘at
>>    this moment’.
>>    - Awa Pit (Barbacoan) has several strategies to mark clausal
>>    negation. One of them, the negative suffix *-ma*, indicates past-time
>>    reference in the absence of tense marking, and future-time reference in
>>    combination with the future marker *-ni *(Curnow 1997: 332/33). In my
>>    assessment, it cannot combine with the imperfective suffix *-mtu*, which
>>    is the default marker to express present-time reference in the language.
>>
>>
>>
>> If you can think of similar examples in languages you are familiar with,
>> I would be very interested in knowing more about them, so as to get a
>> better idea about how common such items with non-present semantics are
>> cross-linguistically, and what their distribution might be. So far, I have
>> mostly found them in the Americas.
>>
>> Many thanks in advance!
>>
>>
>>
>> Best wishes,
>>
>> Tom Koss
>>
>> PhD candidate at the University of Antwerp
>>
>
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