[Lingtyp] Intuitions about inclusive time reference

[Ellison Luk]

Hi Östen and all,

I agree with Siva's English sentence, although I wouldn't entirely disagree
with the compatibility of "Mary submits her proposal today"/"Mary is
submitting her proposal today".

In Hong Kong Cantonese (my native language, but not one I've worked on), I
would probably use what I would call a 'focus nominalisation' construction,
which uses the copula 係 *hai* and attributive 嘅 *ge*. In less careful
speech, the copula can be dropped, but not the attributive, but I haven't
marked this in the examples below. The modals are 要 *jiu *'obligation', 想
*soeng* 'intention', and 應該 *jinggoi* 'should (epistemic)' are optional and
context-dependent, but feel more natural to me. (I've left out the tone
marking, and /j/ represents a palatal approximant)

1. Mary 係（要／想／應該）今日交個proposal嘅。
*Mary hai (jiu / soeng / jinggoi) gamjat gaau go proposal ge*
Mary COPULA (modals) today send.in COUNTER proposal ATTRIBUTIVE
(=It is today that Mary submits the proposal.)

If "proposal" is the topic:

2. 個proposal Mary 係（要／想／應該）今日交嘅。
*go proposal Mary COPULA (jiu / soeng / jinggoi) gamjat gaau ge*
COUNTER proposal Mary COPULA (modals) today send.in ATTRIBUTIVE
(=As for the proposal, Mary is/was to submit it today)

If "today" is the topic:

3. 今日 Mary 係 （要／想／應該）交 個proposal嘅。
*gamjat * *Mary COPULA (jiu / soeng / jinggoi) gaau go proposal ge*
today Mary COPULA (modals) send.in COUNTER proposal ATTRIBUTIVE
(=Today Mary is/was to submit the proposal)

In 2 and 3, the copula can also be moved before the subject 'Mary', but I
don't think the meaning changes significantly.

I suppose the basic construction also works technically, but to me they
don't sound naturalistic or informative enough. Maybe if the modal markers
are included.

4. Mary今日交個proposal。
*Mary gamjat gaau go proposal*
Mary today send.in COUNTER proposal

5. 今日Mary交個proposal。
*gamjat Mary gaau go proposal*
today Mary send.in COUNTER proposal

6. 個proposal今日Mary交 。
*go proposal gamjat Mary gaau*
COUNTER proposal today Mary send.in

I hope this helps, and maybe someone who has actually worked on Cantonese
data can correct or verify this!

Best,
Ellison Luk

On Thu, 15 Feb 2024 at 11:53, Cat Butz <Cat.Butz at hhu.de> wrote:

> Hi Östen,
>
> In German, I would say:
> Mary reich-t       heute ihr-en         Antrag     ein.
> Mary hand-3:S:PRES today 3:F:POSS-ACC:S proposal   in
>
> In Bavarian, I would say:
> D=mary       raih-d        haid  ia-n            Àndròg    ai.
> DEF:F:S=Mary hand-3:S:PRES today 3:F:POSS-ACC:S  proposal  in
>
> In my L2 English, I would say:
> Mary is submitting her grant proposal today.
>
> Modifications along the lines of "wollte einreichen / woidd airaiha" or
> "was going to submit" feel optional to me.
>
> Best,
> ---
> Cat Butz (she)
> HHU Düsseldorf
> General Linguistics
>
>
> Am 2024-02-14 22:29, schrieb Östen Dahl:
> > I would like to ask for intuitions about the following, in one or more
> > languages that you are acquainted with.
> >
> > Suppose your colleague Mary said on Monday: "Tomorrow I'm going to
> > submit my grant proposal." Now it's about noon on Tuesday, and you
> > have no idea whatsoever of the time of the realization of her
> > intention. Maybe she did it in the morning, maybe she'll wait until
> > midnight, and maybe she's just doing it right now. How would you
> > express the sentence below in your language(s), replacing SUBMIT by a
> > suitable verb form? The idea is that you should try to use a maximally
> > simple and natural formulation without excluding any possibility.
> >
> > Today Mary SUBMIT her grant proposal
> >
> > All comments are welcome.
> >
> > Thanks in advance!
> >
> > - Östen
> > _______________________________________________
> > Lingtyp mailing list
> > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> > https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing list
> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20240215/39e94a8a/attachment.htm>