[Lingtyp] R: Non-present lexemes

[Raffaele Simone]

Dear friends,
the Italian adverb ora “now” means both “quite recently in the past” and “shortly”.

  1.  Ne abbiamo parlato ora
We talked about it an instant ago

  1.  Ne parleremo ora

We shall talk about it in a moment
Best,
Raffaele

==============
Emeritus Professor, Università Roma Tre
Hon C Lund University
Membre de l'Académie Royale de Belgique
Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de France
Accademico (corrispondente) della Crusca
Prix de l'Institut de France-Fondation Bonnefous 2022
===============
Attività e pubblicazioni // Activity and publications http://uniroma3.academia.edu/RaffaeleSimone

Da: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> Per conto di David Gil
Inviato: venerdì 2 dicembre 2022 20:07
A: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
Oggetto: Re: [Lingtyp] Non-present lexemes


Dear all,

In English, 'this evening', uttered at around 3 or 4 am, can, with a bit of effort, be understood as referring to either the previous evening or the following evening, depending on context, but not to the present time.

In Hebrew, a similar but less marginal (ie. much more common) pattern is evident with halayla (DEF:night), which, when uttered during daytime, can refer to either the preceding night ('last night') or the following night ('tonight'), but obviously not to the present.

The generalization seems to be that English this / Hebrew ha= plus part-of-day expression refers to the nearest appropriate part of day to the time of speech, with no inherent specification of relative (past, present or future) time.  (With an added complication for English, which, instead of #this night, has either last night or tonight for past and future respectively.)

David



--

David Gil



Senior Scientist (Associate)

Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig, 04103, Germany



Email: gil at shh.mpg.de<mailto:gil at shh.mpg.de>

Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-526117713

Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-082113720302


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