[Lingtyp] R: Non-present lexemes

Wed Dec 7 17:03:58 UTC 2022

Dear all,

A short *précis *in reply to Björn's second point. Yes, the Macedonian
aorist can occur in future contexts (an example from my student is below),
as well as in past ones, but it appears never to refer to present events,
and not even to atemporal/habitual/iterative ones (or so I'm told: see my
email earlier in this thread). In the last respect, it differs from the
perfective present of (other) Slavic languages.

*Gubi=se ili te=ubiv!*
lose.IMP=REFL or 2SG.ACC=kill.AO
'Get lost or I'll kill you!"

That said, it is of course true that this is not a tense marker but an
aspect marker (as in fact I stressed in my earlier email), so for sure one
could not gloss it "nonpresent". It is however interesting, to me at least,
that it doesn't occur with present or "atemporal" time reference -- the
latter being of course a cross-linguistically rather common interpretation
of (so-called) presente tenses, as I believe Tom himself has shown in
earlier work. And if you go back to Tom's initial inquiry, this state of
affairs seems to meet his question quite exacty ( "The items I’m looking
for do not have to be “non-present tense” markers in the strict sense [...]
The only criterion is that the items in question allow for both past and
future interpretations [...] while a present interpretation is generally
*not* possible").

All best,
Riccardo

Tom Koss <Tom.Koss at uantwerpen.be> escreveu no dia quarta, 7/12/2022 à(s)
16:39:

> Dear Björn,
>
>    1. That is a very good point. Even though I would, tentatively and as
>    someone who doesn't know very much about pragmatics, suggest that there
>    might be a difference between "true" sequentiality, marking sequence of
>    events in real time, and "discursive" sequentiality, used to "link up a
>    verbal (re)action with what has been the topic of the verbal exchange", as
>    you put it.
>
>    2. The reason I mentioned the Macedonian aorist as being able to refer
>    to both past and future was the following passage from Ricardo's exchange
>    with his student: "when [the aorist is] used with a future meaning, it
>    generally has the implication of something being 'imminent', like it is a
>    guaranteed and unavoidable event (or a strong promise or threat)".
>    As for Russian, I didn't want to say that the present perfective could
>    have a past interpretation. What I had in mind was the Russian perfective
>    as such, irrespective of tense marking, because it typically has past-time
>    reference with past tense morphology and future-time reference with present
>    tense morphology. The fact that the distinction between past and future
>    reference is conditioned by additional tense marking does not contradict my
>    definition of non-present items - in my initial inquiry, I explicitly said
>    that the choice between past and future interpretations may be conditioned
>    by grammatical context (which, I strongly assume, is also the case for most
>    temporal adverbs mentioned in this thread). Does that make sense?
>
> Best,
> Tom
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Wiemer, Bjoern <wiemerb at uni-mainz.de>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, December 7, 2022 12:33 PM
> *To:* Tom Koss <Tom.Koss at uantwerpen.be>
> *Subject:* RE: [Lingtyp] R: Non-present lexemes
>
>
> CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not
> click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know
> the content is safe.
>
> Lieber Tom,
>
> ich wäre sehr froh, wenn wir zu diesem Thema weiter im engeren Kontakt
> bleiben könnten. Ich glaube, dieses Thema ist geprägt von einigen
> Mißverständnissen in der „mainstream“-Literatur, so daß es sehr wichtig
> scheint, ganz genau festzulegen, was man mit „present“, „temporal
> reference“ u.a. Dingen meint. Sehr kurz gesagt: die Futurfunktion des
> PFV.PRS ergibt sich im Slavischen als spezieller Bereich von
> „Nonpast-Irrealis“; was natürlich voraussetzt, daß man auch „Irrealis“ gut
> eingrenzt…
>
>
>
> Im Anhang noch ein „recent paper“ meinerseits. Ist vielleicht nicht ganz
> unnütz.
>
> Mit besten Grüßen,
>
> Björn.
>
>
>
> *From:* Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> *On Behalf Of
> * Tom Koss
> *Sent:* Wednesday, December 7, 2022 11:55 AM
> *To:* Lingtyp list <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> *Subject:* Re: [Lingtyp] R: Non-present lexemes
>
>
>
> Dear all,
>
>
>
> many, many thanks for all the responses! I really appreciate it. I hope
> you forgive me that I cannot respond to every contributor personally.
>
>
>
> A few summarizing observations: this phenomenon seems to be much more
> widespread than I would have assumed, especially in Indo-European and
> Uralic languages. Also, non-present semantics seems to be associated mostly
> with adverbs and particles, while verbal paradigms referring to the
> non-present are much rarer, the only examples for the latter being the
> recency/remoteness markers of Piraha, the Macedonian aorist and the
> perfective aspect in Russian.
>
>
>
> Within the group of adverbs, I could make out three different types with
> more or less equal frequencies: adverbs indicating a short relative
> distance from the present ('recent past and near future'), adverbs
> indicating a great relative distance from the present ('remote past and
> remote future'), and adverbs indicating an absolute, in most cases
> intermediate distance from the present ('yesterday and tomorrow', or even
> 'day before yesterday and day after tomorrow'). For some adverbs, one of
> the two temporal interpretations (past or future) is more typical or
> considered to be ‘the correct one’ by prescriptivists.
>
>
>
> The fact that any clausal connective encoding some kind of sequentiality
> can, by definition, only refer to the non-present is something I hadn’t
> thought about, so thanks for drawing my attention to it. I maybe should
> have added to my definition that I am mainly looking for non-present
> semantics within simple clauses.
>
>
>
> Many thanks again! Please feel free to provide me with further examples in
> case something else comes to your mind.
>
>
>
> All best,
>
> Tom
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> *From:* Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of
> Raffaele Simone <raffaele.simone at uniroma3.it>
> *Sent:* Sunday, December 4, 2022 5:03 PM
> *To:* David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de>; lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <
> lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> *Subject:* [Lingtyp] R: Non-present lexemes
>
>
>
> *CAUTION:* This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not
> click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know
> the content is safe.
>
>
>
> 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
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>
>
> *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
>
> Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-526117713
>
> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-082113720302
>
>
>
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