[Lingtyp] R: Non-present lexemes

Fri Dec 9 10:56:13 UTC 2022

Dear Riccardo,
thanks for this mail and the nice example. I must confess that I have been unaware of it (but now see that Tomić adduces such cases in her grammar). However, it is not true that it differs from PFV.PRS in (other) Slavic languages. You do have exactly the same structure (and the pragmatic background), e.g. in Polish (1) or Russian (2), both constructed (but not so difficult to find):

(1)               Przestań                gada-ć,            bo                    Cię                  stłuk-ę.

stop[pfv].imp.sg   speak-inf         because           2sg.acc            beat[pfv]-npst.1sg

‘Stop, or I’ll beat you.’

(2)               Perestan‘,              a to                  on-a                 obid-it-sja.

stop[pfv].imp.sg   otherwise        3sg-f.nom       get_offended[pfv]-npst.3sg-rfl

‘Stop, or she will get offended / gets offended.’

I leave open as for whether the PFV.PRS-forms are to be interpreted as future (I prefer to call them non-past, see glossing).

Tomić, Olga Mišeska. 2012. A Grammar of Macedonian. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publ.

Best,
Björn.

Von: Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] Im Auftrag von Riccardo Giomi
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 7. Dezember 2022 18:04
An: Tom Koss <Tom.Koss at uantwerpen.be>
Cc: Lingtyp list <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Betreff: Re: [Lingtyp] R: Non-present lexemes

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<mailto: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.

  1.  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<mailto:wiemerb at uni-mainz.de>>
Sent: Wednesday, December 7, 2022 12:33 PM
To: Tom Koss <Tom.Koss at uantwerpen.be<mailto:Tom.Koss at uantwerpen.be>>
Subject: RE: [Lingtyp] R: Non-present lexemes

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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<mailto: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<mailto: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<mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org>> on behalf of Raffaele Simone <raffaele.simone at uniroma3.it<mailto:raffaele.simone at uniroma3.it>>
Sent: Sunday, December 4, 2022 5:03 PM
To: David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de<mailto:gil at shh.mpg.de>>; lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>>
Subject: [Lingtyp] R: Non-present lexemes

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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
2.     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<https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Funiroma3.academia.edu%2FRaffaeleSimone&data=05%7C01%7CTom.Koss%40uantwerpen.be%7Cee22d939b87441ee29d308dad84b3c86%7C792e08fb2d544a8eaf72202548136ef6%7C0%7C0%7C638060115009803669%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=T5BeIZ9wnorvhg7JrxQBHOVAznjXqowhhvTlmHAt%2BNQ%3D&reserved=0>

Da: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org>> Per conto di David Gil
Inviato: venerdì 2 dicembre 2022 20:07
A: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto: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

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