Tense

[ROOD DAVID S]

In Lakota certainly, and as far as I can tell in the other Siouan
languages, the category that corresponds most closely to English tense is
"realis/irrealis".  Lakota speakers distinguish events that are real, in
the sense that they have occurred or are occurring, from everything else.
The morpheme "kta/kte", Hochunk kje, marks "irrealis".  Frequently,
therefore that will match up with an English future, but it also matches
various kinds of predictions, "maybe", and "probably" kinds of sentences,
complements of verbs like "want" and "hope", etc.  There are adverbs to
indicate time, like "yesterday" or "a while ago" or "right now", and
others to indicate the degree of confidence a speaker has in the
probability of an event, but these categories aren't marked systematically
on the verbs.

Hope that helps.
	DAvid


David S. Rood
Dept. of Linguistics
Univ. of Colorado
295 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309-0295
USA
rood at colorado.edu

On Fri, 4 Apr 2003, Henning Garvin wrote:

>
> I have a small question that regards tense in Ho-Chunk and Siouan in
> general.  Most of the literature that I have gone through (and I could have
> somehow missed it) doesn’t give tense a very strong treatment.
> What I have seen is that Ho-Chunk seems to make a future - non-future
> distinction based on the suffix
> -kjene or the intentive -kje.
>
> Most often, the 3Pl subject form -ire (or -hire) is given to indicate the
> subject.  However, in getting forms this actually is the past tense.
>
> Jagu aire?
> Jagu e-ire?
> What say-3Pl?
> What did they say?
>
> Jagu anaaNk?
> Jagu e-naaNk?
> What say-3Pl?
> What are they saying?
>
> I think Miner is the only one that correctly lists these forms.  Yet there
> is no extensive treatment of tense in his work.  This seems to be the only
> form that indicates something took place in the past rather than not in the
> future.
> Past can be indicated through the absence of the positional in other cases.
>
> waNk  naNka naNwaNnaNks^aNnaN.
>
> waNk  naNka  naNwaN-naNk-s^aNaN.
>
> man   that (sit) sing-POS (sit)-Declarative
>
> That man is singing (seated).
>
> waNk naNka naNwaNnaN.
>
> waNk naNka naNwaN- naN
>
> man that (sit) sing- Declarative.
>
> That man sang.
>
> In the above forms the demonstrative can be replaced with the indefenite
> article -iz^aN or the defenite article -ra with the same effect.
>
> My question is if you all think there is more to tense in Ho-Chunk than what
> i have read?  What is happening in other Siouan langauges.  I believe I read
> in a paper somewhere that Lakhota also makes a future-non-future
> distinction.  Do positionals have a similar effect (I’m especially curious
> about Chiwere)?  Thank you.
>
> On a side note, a budding linguist like myself, and as a person with a
> vested interest in Ho-Chunk langauge study I really appreciate this List.
> You all have no idea how much more efficient and valuable my studies have
> become based on the archives and current comments on this List.  Thank you
> all again.
>
> Henning Garvin
> UW-Madison
> Anthropology/Linguistics
>
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