[Lingtyp] R: Non-present lexemes

Fri Dec 9 11:10:02 UTC 2022

Dear Björn,

Yes, absolutely! I realize that my formulation may not have been really
clear: what I meant was that the Macedonian aorist might differ from the
perfective present of (some) Slavic languages *in not having
habitual/atemporal uses*, not in being able to refer to the future.

Best,
R

Wiemer, Bjoern <wiemerb at uni-mainz.de> escreveu no dia sexta, 9/12/2022 à(s)
11:56:

> 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> 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>
> *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
>
> 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> *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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