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Past interpretation and graded tense in Medumba

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Abstract

This paper provides a formal semantic analysis of past interpretation in Medumba (Grassfields Bantu), a graded tense language. Based on original fieldwork, the study explores the empirical behavior and meaning contribution of graded past morphemes in Medumba and relates these to the account of the phenomenon proposed in Cable (Nat Lang Semant 21:219–276, 2013) for Gĩkũyũ. Investigation reveals that the behavior of Medumba gradedness markers differs from that of their Gĩkũyũ counterparts in meaningful ways and, more broadly, discourages an analysis as presuppositional eventuality or reference time modifiers. Instead, the Medumba markers are most appropriately analyzed as quantificational tenses. It also turns out that Medumba, though belonging to the typological class of graded tense languages, shows intriguing similarities to genuinely tenseless languages in allowing for temporally unmarked sentences and exploiting aspectual and pragmatic cues for reference time resolution. The more general cross-linguistic implication of the study is that the set of languages often subsumed under the label “graded tense” does not in fact form a natural class and that more case-by-case research is needed to refine this category.
Nat Lang Semantics (2017) 36:1–52
DOI 10.1007/s11050-016-9128-1
Past interpretation and graded tense in Medumba
Anne Mucha1,2
Published online: 15 October 2016
© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016
Abstract This paper provides a formal semantic analysis of past interpretation in
Medumba (Grassfields Bantu), a graded tense language. Based on original fieldwork,
the study explores the empirical behavior and meaning contribution of graded past
morphemes in Medumba and relates these to the account of the phenomenon pro-
posed in Cable (Nat Lang Semant 21:219–276, 2013)forG˜ık˜uy˜u. Investigation reveals
that the behavior of Medumba gradedness markers differs from that of their G˜ık ˜uy ˜u
counterparts in meaningful ways and, more broadly, discourages an analysis as presup-
positional eventuality or reference time modifiers. Instead, the Medumba markers are
most appropriately analyzed as quantificational tenses. It also turns out that Medumba,
though belonging to the typological class of graded tense languages, shows intrigu-
ing similarities to genuinely tenseless languages in allowing for temporally unmarked
sentences and exploiting aspectual and pragmatic cues for reference time resolution.
The more general cross-linguistic implication of the study is that the set of languages
often subsumed under the label “graded tense” does not in fact form a natural class
and that more case-by-case research is needed to refine this category.
Keywords Graded tense ·Past interpretation ·Grassfields Bantu
BAnne Mucha
mucha@ids-mannheim.de
1Department Linguistik, Universität Potsdam, Karl-Liebknecht-Straße 24-25, 14476 Potsdam,
Germany
2Present Address: Institut für Deutsche Sprache (IDS), Augustaanlage 32,
68165 Mannheim, Germany
123
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... 3 Languages with no overt tense include Kalaallisut (Eskimo-Aleut), Shaer (2003), Bittner (2005Bittner ( , 2011; Chinese (Sino-Tibetan), Smith and Erbaugh (2005), Lin (2006); Blackfoot (Algonquian), Ritter and Wiltschko (2004), Reis Silva and Matthewson (2007); St'át'imcets (Salish), Matthewson (2006); Gitxsan (Tsimshianic), (Jóhannsdóttir & Matthewson, 2007); Yucatec Maya (Mayan), Bohnemeyer (2009); Hausa (Afro-Asiatic), Mucha (2013), Bochnak et al. (2019); Northern Paiute (Uto-Aztecan), Toosarvandani (2016); Samoan (Austronesian), Bochnak et al. (2019); Sierra Zapotec (Oto-Manguean), Toosarvandani (2021). 4 Languages that have been argued to have optional tense include Mbyá Guarani (Tupi-Guarani), Thomas (2014); Washo (isolate), Bochnak (2016); Medumba (Niger-Congo), Mucha (2017); Tlingit (Na-Dene), Cable (2017); Atayal and Javanese (Austronesian), Chen et al. (2021). 5 Abbreviations in the glosses in (3) are to be interpreted as follows: prog 'progressive', appl 'applicative', incompl 'incompletive' (a category that combines imperfective aspect and indicative mood), cont 'continuous'. ...
... If the interpretation is restricted, e.g., to nonfuture, the restriction is established through discourse constraints. This account is adopted by Mucha (2013) for Hausa, Bochnak (2016) for Washo, Toosarvandani (2016) for Northern Paiute, Mucha (2017) for Medumba, Bochnak et al. (2019) for Samoan, Chen et al. (2021) for Javanese; in all cases the tense pronoun is realized syntactically in a tense projection. Alternatively, Shaer (2003) suggests that in Kalaallisut tense semantics is built into the meaning of verbs and not expressed in a syntactic tense node. ...
... Temporal reference is obtained via a covert pronoun merged in the syntactic structure, but this pronoun has no lexically-specified tense features and so it can refer to past, present or future times. Of particular relevance here is that Bochnak (2016) and Mucha (2017) extend this approach to Washo and Medumba, respectively, which similarly to Paraguayan Guarani do not generally allow future reference for bare predicates, requiring a prospective aspectual marker. Instead of proposing covert non-future tense for Washo and Medumba, Bochnak (2016) and Mucha (2017) suggest a covert tense whose restriction to non-future times is not lexical but is at the level of discourse. ...
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Paraguayan Guarani does not overtly mark tense in its inflectional system. Prior accounts of languages without obligatory morphological tense have posited a phonologically covert lexical tense, or have introduced tense semantics via a rule, in the post-syntactic interpretative component. We offer a more radical approach: Paraguayan Guarani does not have tense at the level of lexical or logical semantics. We propose that evaluation time shift, a mechanism independently attested in the narrative present in languages with tense, is more widely used in Paraguayan Guarani for encoding temporal meaning. The broader consequence of our proposal is that tense is not a linguistic universal.
... Not all languages do, however. Morphologically overt tense marking may be entirely absent in a language (Bittner, 2005;Jóhannsdóttir & Matthewson, 2008;Lin, 2012;Matthewson, 2006;Mucha, 2013;Shaer, 2003;Tonhauser, 2011) or it may be optional (Bochnak, 2016;Cable, 2017;Mucha, 2017;Mucha & Fominyam, 2017;van Egmond, 2012). In this paper, we examine to what extent this variation affects the temporal interpretation of attitude complements. ...
... In contrast to languages such as English and Japanese, finite clauses in optional-tense languages are grammatical without morphological tense marking. Morphologically tenseless clauses in these languages have also received analyses with covert semantic tenses (Cable, 2017) or without (Bochnak, 2016;Mucha, 2017). ...
... As in our discussion of Washo in section 2.1, our focus is on stative sentences. For an account of the temporal and aspectual interpretation of eventive sentences, we refer the reader to Mucha (2017). The framework we are assuming is realized in Medumba as follows: the reference time of a sentence is syntactically represented as an indexed temporal pronoun which is phonologically covert. ...
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In this paper, we investigate the temporal interpretation of propositional attitude complement clauses in four typologically unrelated languages: Washo (language isolate), Medumba (Niger-Congo), Hausa (Afro-Asiatic), and Samoan (Austronesian). Of these languages, Washo and Medumba are optional-tense languages, while Hausa and Samoan are tenseless. Just like in obligatory-tense languages, we observe variation among these languages when it comes to the availability of so-called simultaneous and backward-shifted readings of complement clauses. For our optional-tense languages, we argue that a Sequence of Tense parameter is active in these languages, just as in obligatory-tense languages. However, for completely tenseless clauses, we need something more. We argue that there is variation in the degree to which languages make recourse to res-movement, or a similar mechanism that manipulates LF structures to derive backward-shifted readings in tenseless complement clauses. We additionally appeal to cross-linguistic variation in the lexical semantics of perfective aspect to derive or block certain readings. The result is that the typological classification of a language as tensed, optionally tensed, or tenseless, does not alone determine the temporal interpretation possibilities for complement clauses. Rather, structural parameters of variation cross-cut these broad classes of languages to deliver the observed cross-linguistic picture.
... Grammatical elements which convey some notion of anteriority can be of at least three major types: (i) pronominal past tenses (e.g., Partee 1973;Heim 1994;Kratzer 1998), (ii) existentially quantified past tenses (e.g., Ogihara 1996;von Stechow 2009;Sharvit 2014;Mucha 2017), or (iii) perfect aspects (e.g., McCawley 1971;Leech 1971;Comrie 1976Comrie , 1985Binnick 1991;Portner 2003;Mittwoch 2008; among many others). In this sub-section, we situate our proposal within the conceptual space of possibilities for anteriority operators proposed in the literature, and highlight the contributions our paper makes to the ongoing debate about these issues. ...
... A third influential line of analysis (which we don't discuss here) holds that tenses denote operators which relate two time intervals given in the syntax (Stowell 1995;Uribe-Etxebarria 1997, 2014;inter alia). 5 For discussion of the distinction in other languages, see for example Sharvit (2014) and Mucha (2015Mucha ( , 2017. ...
... Javanese tau and Atayal -in-hence do not pattern with SOT languages like English, but rather with non-SOT languages where only back-shifted readings of an embedded past tense are possible, such as Hebrew (Sharvit 2003), Japanese (Ogihara 1996;Kusumoto 1999;Kubota et al. 2009), Russian (von Stechow and Grønn 2013) or Medumba (Mucha 2017). The data suggest that tau/-in-in embedded clauses mark pastness relative to some evaluation time, which is supplied by the time of the matrix event, rather than to the utterance time. ...
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Recent literature has debated the nature and robustness of distinctions between pronominal tenses and existential tenses, between absolute tenses and relative tenses, and between perfect aspects and relative tenses. In this paper, we investigate anteriority markers in Javanese and Atayal, two distantly related Austronesian languages. On the basis of a range of empirical diagnostics, we propose that the markers tau in Javanese and -in- in Atayal are relative past tenses with existential semantics. We demonstrate that plausible alternative analyses are not tenable: these markers do not have pronominal tense semantics and they are not perfect aspects despite their salient ‘experiential’ interpretation. Further, we claim that a single language can possess both pronominal and existential tenses. Our diagnostics show that while tau and -in- are existential past tenses, Javanese and Atayal each also have a pronominal tense morpheme which is phonologically null and which pragmatically interacts with tau and -in-.
... The empirical findings indicate that Guajajára exhibits what is called a graded tense system for past temporal reference. Graded tenses grammatically distinguish more than one degree of past or future time reference to track how remote the events talked about are (Comrie 1985;Dahl 1985;Bybee et al. 1994;Mugane 1997;Dahl and Velupillai 2011;Nurse 2003Nurse , 2008Hayashi 2011;Botne 2012;Cable 2013;Hayashi and Oshima 2015;Klecha and Bochnak 2016;LaCross 2016;Mucha 2017;Bohnemeyer 2018). In this paper I argue that these morphemes are grammatical markers encoding both past and temporal remoteness and propose a preliminary semantic analysis as pronominal/referential past tenses (Partee 1973), exhibiting the presuppositional semantics of tenses and constraining topic times to time intervals preceding the utterance time. ...
... Although Guajajára belongs to the Tupí-Guaraní family, I take as points of comparison two studies of languages in the Bantu family: Cable's (2013) of Gĩkũyũ's temporal remoteness morphemes (TRMs) and Mucha's (2017) of Medumba's past remoteness morphemes (PRMs). This decision is mainly based on the following facts: (i) both studies are built upon empirically and theoretically rigorous research; (ii) they maximize replicability of data (see Cover and Tonhauser 2015); (iii) and most interestingly, they offer different formal semantic analyses of the remoteness morphemes in their respective languages. ...
... This principle requires speakers to use the sentence with the strongest presupposition among its alternatives (Heim 1991;Chemla 2008;Sauerland 2008;Schlenker 2012;Lauer 2016;among others). 7 In contrast, Mucha (2017) finds that in Medumba the PRMs are not allowed in contexts of remoteness indeterminacy, suggesting that they do not have the presuppositional semantics of their Gĩkũyũ and Luganda counterparts. ...
... While according to traditional wisdom, quantificational and pronominal approaches account equally well for the core observations on tense in English given certain auxiliary assumptions, some works argue that languages vary in whether they have quantificational or pronominal tenses, or even both (see e.g. Ogihara and Sharvit 2012;Sharvit 2014;Mucha 2015Mucha , 2017Chen et al. 2021). For the purposes of this paper the most relevant questions are i) whether tense in Polish should be considered pronominal or quantificational and ii) what implications a pronominal analysis would have regarding the analysis of SOT in complement clauses. ...
... Medumba is a graded tense language, and the morpheme ná' glossed as PAST in the examples is not a general tense marker but actually marks remote past. This does not make a difference for our purposes, however, since the pattern is the same with near past (seeMucha 2017).Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved. ...
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... Somewhat in between, then, are analyses that posit the existence of minimal functional structure, in the form of a pronoun-like covert operator restricting reference to Topic Time via discourse constraints (see e.g. (Bochnak, 2016;Mucha, 2013;2017)). ...
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... Note that in Southern Ndebele, the borderline between near and remote pasts is much more flexible than it appears to be in Gikũyũ, and the overall contrast appears to function quite differently. Mucha (2017) notes that in Medumba (Grassfields Bantu), no past markers can be used at all if speakers do not know when the event took place; a temporally unmarked form of the verb is used instead (Mucha 2017: 15-17). ...
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... Figure 2 Cyclic tense: the temporal intervals (relative to t * , the time-of-speech) licensing I and III are both discontinuous time of the described situation is understood to overlap with or obtain prior to the day of utterance -this is shown in table 2. The appeal to a contrast between hodiernal and prehodiernal "reference frames" is in fact well motivated by typologies of graded tense systems, where, crosslinguistically, the day-of-speech forms by far the most common basis for grammaticalising "objective measures" of temporal distance (Dahl 1983). This is a fact that is recapitulated over disparate language families (Brugger 2001;Cable 2013;Mucha 2017, cf. Xiqués 2021. ...
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... Grassfileds languages, e.g., Medumba: Mucha (2016), has a symmetric graded tense system with three past and three future tense markers, in Awing. However, Awing has 'compound tense clauses', where the today past tense (P1) and yesterday or days/weeks before past tense (P2) markers are used simultaneously. ...
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This project describes the nominal, verbal and ‘truncation’ systems of Awing and explains the syntactic and semantic functions of the multifunctional l<-><-> (LE) morpheme in copular and wh-focused constructions. Awing is a Bantu Grassfields language spoken in the North West region of Cameroon. The work begins with morphological processes viz. deverbals, compounding, reduplication, borrowing and a thorough presentation of the pronominal system and takes on verbal categories viz. tense, aspect, mood, verbal extensions, negation, adverbs and triggers of a homorganic N(asal)-prefix that attaches to the verb and other verbal categories. Awing grammar also has a very unusual phenomenon whereby nouns and verbs take long and short forms. A chapter entitled truncation is dedicated to the phenomenon. It is observed that the truncation process does not apply to bare singular NPs, proper names and nouns derived via morphological processes. On the other hand, with the exception of the 1st person non-emphatic possessive determiner and the class 7 noun prefix, nouns generally take the truncated form with modifiers (i.e., articles, demonstratives and other possessives). It is concluded that nominal truncation depicts movement within the DP system (Abney 1987). Truncation of the verb occurs in three contexts: a mass/plurality conspiracy (or lattice structuring in terms of Link 1983) between the verb and its internal argument (i.e., direct object); a means to align (exhaustive) focus (in terms of Fery’s 2013), and a means to form polar questions. The second part of the work focuses on the role of the LE morpheme in copular and wh-focused clauses. Firstly, the syntax of the Awing copular clause is presented and it is shown that copular clauses in Awing have ‘subject-focus’ vs ‘topic-focus’ partitions and that the LE morpheme indirectly relates such functions. Semantically, it is shown that LE does not express contrast or exhaustivity in copular clauses. Turning to wh-constructions, the work adheres to Hamblin’s (1973) idea that the meaning of a question is the set of its possible answers and based on Rooth’s (1985) underspecified semantic notion of alternative focus, concludes that the LE morpheme is not a Focus Marker (FM) in Awing: LE does not generate or indicate the presence of alternatives (Krifka 2007); The LE morpheme can associate with wh-elements as a focus-sensitive operator with semantic import that operates on the focus alternatives by presupposing an exhaustive answer, among other notions. With focalized categories, the project further substantiates the claim in Fominyam & Šimík (2017), namely that exhaustivity is part of the semantics of the LE morpheme and not derived via contextual implicature, via a number of diagnostics. Hence, unlike in copular clauses, the LE morpheme with wh-focused categories is analysed as a morphological exponent of a functional head Exh corresponding to Horvath's (2010) EI (Exhaustive Identification). The work ends with the syntax of verb focus and negation and modifies the idea in Fominyam & Šimík (2017), namely that the focalized verb that associates with the exhaustive (LE) particle is a lower copy of the finite verb that has been moved to Agr. It is argued that the LE-focused verb ‘cluster’ is an instantiation of adjunction. The conclusion is that verb doubling with verb focus in Awing is neither a realization of two copies of one and the same verb (Fominyam and Šimík 2017), nor a result of a copy triggered by a focus marker (Aboh and Dyakonova 2009). Rather, the focalized copy is said to be merged directly as the complement of LE forming a type of adjoining cluster.
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This paper discusses the structural realisation of contrastive focus in the Grassfields Bantu language Bamileke Mǝ̀dʉ́mbà, yet another language with grammatically optional focus fronting. We show that the realisation of contrastive focus in Mǝ̀dʉ́mbà is by default marked in situ with the morphological focus marker á. We further show that á introduces an additional, not-at-issue exhaustivity inference as part of its lexical meaning. Taken together, this means that two often-discussed interpretive triggers of grammatically optional focus fronting, namely, contrastivity and exhaustivity, are not responsible for triggering Mǝ̀dʉ́mbà’s focus left-dislocation. Rather, the main semantic contribution of focus fronting consists in triggering an existence presupposition, a discourse-semantic effect well known from other focus–background bipartitions, possibly in combination with other, softer discourse-semantic effects, such as the special emphasis required in cases of discourse unexpectedness.
Chapter
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Book
Derek Nurse looks at variations in the form and function of tense and aspect in Bantu, a branch of Niger-Congo, the world’s largest language phylum. Bantu languages are spoken in central, eastern, and southern sub-Saharan Africa south of a line between Nigeria and Somalia. By current estimates there are between 250 and 600 of them, as yet neither adequately classified nor fully described. Professor Nurse’s account is based on data from more than 200 Bantu languages and varieties, a representative sample of which is freely available on the publisher’s website. He devotes substantial chapters to the analysis and comparison of the different tense and aspect systems found in Bantu. He also examines the verbal categories with which they interact, including negation and focus. Synchronic and diachronic perspectives are interwoven throughout the book. Following a brief history of Bantu over the last five thousand years, the final two chapters look systematically at the history of tense and aspect in Bantu. The first deals with the reconstruction of the earlier forms from which contemporary structures, morphemes, and categories are derived, and the second with the processes of change, including grammaticalization, by means of which older analytical structures and independent lexical items moved as they became incorporated as grammatical inflections and categories.
Book
Bernard Comrie defines tense as the grammaticalisation of location in time. In this textbook he introduces readers to the range of variation found in tense systems across the languages of the world, bringing together a rich collection of illustrative material that student and specialist alike will find invaluable. This systematic account of the data is carefully integrated with a theoretical discussion of tense that is sensitive both to the range of tense oppositions found cross-linguistically and also to the constraints on that variation. For the most part the book is written without formalism, nor is it written within the framework of any specific current theory of linguistics. Nevertheless, as the final chapter makes clear, a formal theory of tense can build upon the insights gained here. For all readers, Dr Comrie's coherent and characteristically elegant account of this complex grammatical category will provide a solid basis for further research on tense, even in a language as thoroughly studied as English.
Book
List of abbreviations. Preface. 1. Introduction. 2. Tense and temporal adverbials in simple sentences. 3. Previous analyses of tenses in embedded clauses. 4. Sequence-of-tense phenomena in complement clauses. 5. Sequence-of-tense phenomena in adjunct clauses. 6. Tense and de re attitudes. Appendix: The syntax and semantics of tenses in English and Japanese. References. Index.