[Lingtyp] modal particle ?

[Christian Lehmann]

Allow me to show you another syntactic construction of Cabecar which I 
find difficult to conceptualize.

 1.

    ¿Bá kt-ä́ ta ijé ra?

2.sg speak-ipfv exist0 3.ps com

             ‘Does it happen that you speak with him?’

 2.

    ...jé-wá (rö) ji̱-á̱ ta jémi̱ kö́yí-r ta.

d.med-pl tsa weep-ipfv exist0 and howl-mid(ipfv) exist0

             ‘… they [animals] have weeping and howling.’

 3.

    Satala rä jé̠k iá-w-á̱ ta ditsä́ yë́.

tiger tsa rfl transform-caus-ipfv exist0 native trl

             ‘It happens that the tiger transforms itself into a person.’

 4.

    ¿Bá yö́-r ta ditsë́-i ?

2.sg form-mid(ipfv) exist0 native-advr

             ‘Have you managed to learn Cabecar ?’

(TSA is 'thematic structure articulator'.)

For reasons that yet escape me, such sentences mostly – though obviously 
not necessarily – have interrogative force. The construction has 
syntactic peculiarities which I will not expound because on the one hand 
they are complicated and on the other they do not seem to touch my 
conceptual question.

Although the aspect is the same in the examples, ex. 1 – 3 have timeless 
reference while ex. 4 refers to something achieved. This difference 
appears to be conditioned by the verb voice (which in itself I find 
inexplicable).

All of this is not my question. My question concerns the 
sentence-semantic function of the particle /ta/ exist0. The 
(preliminary) gloss is supposed to remind the decipherer that this is 
grammaticalized from an erstwhile existential verboid. In the present 
construction, it follows a verbal clause core S and says: ‘S is the 
case’, ‘S does happen’, ‘there are occasions where S’; or with past time 
reference (ex. 4): ‘S did happen / has happened’, ‘S did materialize’. 
Although my analysis implies that /ta/ once was the main predicate in 
this construction, it is now an optional particle.

The language has a validator (in fact, a whole paradigm of them) in 
addition. The validator emphasizes that I am serious about S, that S 
does matter. /Ta/ is not a validator. It does not appear to be in a 
paradigm with anything else. Its closest counterpart in languages closer 
to home would be a modal particle of the kind known from Ancient Greek, 
Russian and German. However, I ignore the relevant conceptual framework: 
Is this sentence modality? Or aktionsart? And what would be an 
appropriate term for this function of /ta/?
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20240903/8e304a0a/attachment.htm>