Temporal reference in a genuinely tenseless language: The case of Hausa
- In this paper, we provide an analysis of temporality in Hausa (Chadic, Afro-Asiatic). By testing the hypothesis of covert tense (Matthewson 2006) against empirical data, we show that Hausa is genuinely tenseless in the sense that the grammar does not restrict the relation between reference time and utterance time. Rather, temporal reference is pragmatically inferred from aspectual and contextual information. We also argue that future time reference in Hausa is realized as a combination of a modal operator and a prospective aspect, thus involving the modal meaning components of intention and prediction as well as event time shifting.
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| Author: | Anne Mucha |
|---|---|
| URN: | urn:nbn:de:bsz:mh39-54281 |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.3765/salt.v22i0.3084 |
| ISSN: | 2163-5951 |
| Parent Title (English): | Proceedings of the 22nd Semantics and Linguistic Theory Conference (SALT 22), held at University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois, May 18 - May 20, 2012 |
| Publisher: | Linguistic Society of America |
| Place of publication: | Washington, DC |
| Editor: | Anca Chereches |
| Document Type: | Conference Proceeding |
| Language: | English |
| Year of first Publication: | 2012 |
| Date of Publication (online): | 2016/11/02 |
| Publicationstate: | Veröffentlichungsversion |
| Reviewstate: | (Verlags)-Lektorat |
| Tag: | Hausa; Modality; Temporal Reference; Tenseless Languages |
| GND Keyword: | Hausa; Tempus |
| First Page: | 188 |
| Last Page: | 207 |
| DDC classes: | 400 Sprache / 400 Sprache, Linguistik |
| Open Access?: | ja |
| Linguistics-Classification: | Grammatikforschung |
| Licence (German): |  Creative Commons - Namensnennung 3.0 Deutschland |