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Citation: Caudal, Patrick, and James
Bednall. 2023. Aspectuo-Temporal
Underspecification in Anindilyakwa:
Descriptive, Theoretical, Typological
and Quantitative Issues. Languages 8:
8. https://doi.org/10.3390/
languages8010008
Academic Editors: Henriëtte de
Swart and Bert Le Bruyn
Received: 3 December 2021
Revised: 11 November 2022
Accepted: 14 November 2022
Published: 23 December 2022
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languages
Article
Aspectuo-Temporal Underspecification in Anindilyakwa:
Descriptive, Theoretical, Typological and Quantitative Issues
Patrick Caudal 1, 2, * and James Bednall 3,4
1CNRS, Laboratoire de Linguistique Formelle, UMR 7110, Case 7031, 5 rue Thomas Mann, CEDEX 13,
75205 Paris, France
2UFR de Linguistique, University of Paris-Cité, 5 rue Thomas Mann, CEDEX 13, 75205 Paris, France
3Higher Education and Research Division, Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education, Batchelor,
NT 0845, Australia
4School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601,
Australia
*Correspondence: patrick.caudal@u-paris.fr
Abstract:
Many so-called ‘zero tense’-marked (which we define as morphologically reduced and
underspecified inflections) or untensed verb forms found in tenseless languages, have been character-
ized as context dependent for their temporal and aspectual interpretation, with the verb’s aspectual
content (either as event structure or viewpoint properties) being given more or less prominent roles
in their temporal anchoring. In this paper, we focus on a morpho-phonologically reduced inflectional
verbal paradigm in Anindilyakwa (Groote Eylandt archipelago, NT, Australia), which is both tempo-
rally and aspectually underspecified, and constitutes an instance of zero tense as defined above. On
the basis of a quantitative study of an annotated corpus of zero-inflected utterances, we establish
that in the absence of independent overt or covert temporal information, the temporal anchoring of
this ‘zero tense’ exhibits complex patterns of sensitivity to event structural parameters. Notably we
establish that while dynamicity/stativity and telicity/atelicity are to some extent valuable predictors
for the temporal interpretation of zero tense in Anindilyakwa, only atomicity (i.e., event punctuality)
and boundedness categorically impose a past temporal anchoring—this confirms insights found in
previous works, both on Anindilyakwa and on other languages, while also differing from other gener-
alisations contained in these works. Our analysis also shows that unlike several zero tenses identified
in various languages (especially in Pidgins and Creoles), Anindilyakwa zero tense-marked dynamic
utterances do not correlate with a past temporal reading. Rather, we show that Anindilyakwa seems
to come closest to languages possessing zero tensed-verbs (or tenseless verbs) where boundedness
monotonically enforces a past temporal anchoring, such as Navajo and Mandarin Chinese. We also
show that aspect-independent temporal information appears to determine the temporal anchoring of
all zero tense-marked unbounded atelic utterances (both stative and dynamic) in Anindilyakwa—a
fact at once conflicting with some claims made in previous works on zero tenses, while confirm-
ing results from past studies of Indigenous languages of the Americas (especially Yucatec Maya),
concerning the role of temporal anaphora in the temporal interpretation of ‘tenseless’ verb forms.
Keywords:
zero tense; temporal underspecification; aspectual underspecification; aspect; event
structure; (un)boundedness; Australian languages
1. Introduction
So-called ‘zero tenses’ have attracted considerable theoretical attention over the past
two or three decades. We will focus here on a special instance of the inflectional verb
paradigm in an under-described Indigenous Australian language, namely Anindilyakwa,
which Bednall (2020) analyses as an indicative ‘zero tense’, both formally and semantically.
Contrary to e.g. the formally non-reduced, and temporally non-underspecified indicative
past tense inflection (realized as a -n
@
suffix in (1)), the Anindilyakwa zero tense has (a) a
Languages 2023,8, 8. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8010008 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/languages
Languages 2023,8, 8 2 of 39
phonologically reduced form (cf. the null suffixed TAM augment Ø in (2a/b)) and (b) a very
‘lightweight’ TAM content, as it is underspecified for both temporal and aspectual meaning,
cf. (2a) (which has a past perfective reading) vs. (2b) (which has a present imperfective
reading).
We assume Anindilyakwa TAM inflections to be discontinuous morphs, combining
a prefixed and a suffixed position in the verb template. Zero tense differs from other
indicative inflections only w.r.t. to its suffixed TAM augment—it is morphologically non-
empty for other tenses (except for the past tense in one small verb class; see below). (1)
is an instance of an indicative past inflected utterance whereas (2a) is in a zero tense-
marked utterance with a past interpretation, and (2b) a zero tense utterance with a present
interpretation; note the identical RE AL prefixed augments in the glosses, and the distinct
PST vs. Ø suffixed augments—see the end of the paper for a complete list of abbreviations
used in our glosses.
(1) kembirra n@m-awiyebe-n@=ma mamawura.
then REAL.VEG-enter-PST=SType V EG.sun
‘Then the sun set’
(M@rungkurra Text, 28–9)
(2) a. yarrungkwa n-ak@n nen@ngkwarrba n@m-akb@rranga-Ø=ma
yesterday 3M-that 3M.man REAL.3M>VE G-find-U SP=S Type
mijiyelya
VEG.beach
‘Yesterday he found the beach’
(JL, JRB1-018-01, 00.05.31)
b. ngayuwa ngu-m@reya-Ø anh@ngu=wa
1.PRO REAL.1-be.hungry-USP NEUT.food=AL L
‘I’m hungry for food’
(JL, 2016-07-15_01_JL, 00.15.27-00.15.32)
As the only other (phonologically minimal) Anindilyakwa verb form with a null
suffixed TAM augment Ø is the so-called ‘zero’ irrealis inflection (IRR-V-Ø) (Bednall 2020,
p. 315), we will refer to the former as a ‘zero tense’ in what follows—even though it is
not morphologically ‘null’ in a strict sense, it is nevertheless morphologically reduced,
and its aspectuo-temporal contribution is absolutely unsaturated and context dependent,
and as such, it does behave similarly to known ‘zero tenses’. The indicative zero tense
and the irrealis zero tense differ w.r.t. to their respective prefixed TAM morphological
slots, respectively glossed RE AL and IRR (in effect, morphological portmanteaus combining
pronominal and TAM information). Similar discontinuous TAM morphs are extremely
common among non-Pama-Nyungan languages. Although it can be tempting to treat these
prefixed vs. suffixed augments as independent morphemes, such an analysis encounters a
number of descriptive difficulties which we cannot address here for want of space—such
as, the very clear coexistence of these seemingly ‘compositional’ paradigms, with clearly
non-compositional paradigms. See e.g., the negative present irrealis inflection, which
is evidently realized as a discontinuous morph (cf. Bednall 2020, pp. 26–29 for further
discussion). It should also be highlighted that some suffixed augments seem to be modal,
not aspectuo-temporal (such as the or NEG.IRR or POT suffixes)—which suggests that in
the Anindilyakwa verb template, it is not the case that a tense-aspect suffix morpheme
compositionally combines with a prefixed modal morpheme. TAM information therefore
appears to be encoded by a single discontinuous morph in Anindilyakwa, rather than by
two separate morphemes.
Of course, the above definition of zero tenses begs the question of their relationship
with so-called ‘tenseless’ verb forms, with languages possessing optional tense marking (cf.
Navajo, Smith et al. 2007), with untensed verb forms in ‘tenseless’ languages (Tonhauser
2011;Bertinetto 2014), and in general, with what has been referred to as the absence of
material exponence in verbal morphology (Stolz and Levkovych 2019). In the case of
so-called optional tense marking, what of unmarked verb forms? Could they be in fact
Languages 2023,8, 8 3 of 39
instances of zero tense verb forms? (For instance, one could very much claim that tense
marking is in fact not optional in Navajo, but that this language possesses a distinct ‘bare’
inflectional verbal paradigm—very much like we think Anindilyakwa does). Are untensed
verb forms (as in tenseless languages) completely deprived of tense-aspect inflections, or
are they only endowed with some phonologically null (or reduced) ‘zero tense’? Such issues
are obviously non-trivial; for instance, so-called ‘superficially tenseless’ languages have
been argued to exist, cf. Matthewson (2006, pp. 673–74), where it is claimed that although
St’át’imcets seems deprived of any tense inflection, it actually possesses a morphologically
null, aspectuo-temporally underspecified ‘zero tense’. See also Ritter and Wiltschko (2014),
where a universal INFL category is posited even for tenseless languages. It should also
be noted that the tenseless nature of certain languages is hotly debated; see, e.g., Alotaibi
(2020) for arguments against tenseless approaches to some varieties of Arabic, and Chen
and Husband (2018) for similar observations about Chinese.
Although settling such a wide-ranging set of questions falls outside the purview of
the present paper, we must stress that at least some so-called ‘tenseless’ or optional tense
marking languages seem to be endowed with zero tenses as defined above (Smith et al.
2007 account of Navajo utterances unmarked for tense looks suspiciously similar to that of
a ‘zero tense’, including our account of the Anindilyakwa ‘zero tense’ to some extent). In
effect, all of these tense forms at least semantically overlap in the sense that all zero tense
verb forms, and many untensed verb forms (qua tenselessness), involve some aspectuo-
temporal underspecification or lightness (‘functional deficiency’ in Nash 2017), i.e., their
temporal interpretation and aspectual viewpoint interpretation is unsaturated and highly
context-dependent.
Given such an underspecified aspectual viewpoint and temporal meaning (i.e. in
the absence of independent temporal information, and of independent aspectual marking,
as found in, e.g., Arabic, Hausa, or Yucatec Maya—see below), most accounts of these
phenomena observe that the temporal interpretation of both ‘zero tense’ and tenseless
utterances is influenced by event structural properties—interpretatively speaking, all these
phenomena therefore seem to form a natural semantic class: the temporal underspecifi-
cation of such verb forms is often made up for by exploiting aspectual information (be it
lexical or contextual). Although a divergent type of analysis of the aspectual and temporal
underspecification of zero tenses is defended in some references, cf., e.g., Winford (2000)
and De Wit (2016), we will not discuss them here—for instance, De Wit (2016) ascribes a
modal (epistemic) and aspectuo-temporal meaning (present perfective) to the Sranan zero
tense). As such an analysis does not seem to apply to the Anindilyakwa zero tense, and
raises a number of fundamental theorical questions we cannot address in the confines of
this paper, we will simply set it aside here.
The idea that aspectual marking (when available) and/or contextual aspectual and
temporal constraints can determine the temporal interpretations of temporally underspec-
ified verb forms is a de facto common, and well-established hypothesis. The effect of
aspectual marking (and the associated aspectual meaning) on temporal anchoring was
early identified for a number of well-documented so-called tenseless (but not aspectless)
languages, such as, e.g., classical Arabic—cf., e.g., Cohen (1989); see Yucatec Maya (Bohne-
meyer 2009, p. 108) and Hausa (Mucha 2013, pp. 389–91) for more recent observations
along the same lines. In these three languages, perfective markers (‘completive’ in Hausa)
trigger past temporal anchoring. It is a well-known fact that viewpoint aspect can some-
times constrain temporal meaning, notably in the sense that perfective viewpoints reject a
present anchoring; this is the so-called ‘present perfective paradox’ (Malchukov 2009;De
Wit 2016). However, overt aspectual viewpoint marking (as found in Hausa or Yucatec
Maya) does not seem available in many tenseless/zero-tense endowed languages. In this
case, event structural (rather than overt viewpoint) parameters will become endowed with
somewhat similar (albeit contextually determined) temporal anchoring functions (see De
Wit 2016 for an extended typological discussion of this phenomenon). Of course, aspectual
parameters are not the only factors capable of influencing the temporal interpretation of
Languages 2023,8, 8 4 of 39
zero tense-marked utterances. Bohnemeyer (2009) thus primarily puts the stress on what he
calls temporal anaphora as a major driving force behind temporal interpretation of tenseless
utterances in Yucatec Maya—in effect, the term designates the ability of languages to tem-
porally anchor tenseless utterances using direct (via, e.g., temporal modifiers) or indirect
(via the discourse context) temporal information; it hints at Bennett and Partee’s (1978)
analysis of the temporal anchoring function of tenses in relation to personal pronouns. This
parameter will be carefully studied in our own analysis, as it can obviously interact with
the temporal effects of aspectual meaning.
We therefore believe it is legitimate to hypothesize that tenselessness/optional tense
marking and ‘zero tenses’ are largely similar phenomena whenever they jointly exhibit
(a) an absent or reduced material exponence with (b) a context-dependent, unsaturated
aspectual and temporal semantics—i.e., involve at once formal and semantic lightness, if
you will; we will use ‘zero-tense’ as a cover term for these three classes of phenomena. In
the remainder of this paper, we will thus argue that tenseless languages (e.g., Mandarin
Chinese), exhibit ‘zero-tense’ utterances—with a hyphen, to contrast this novel, broader
concept with the narrower concept of ‘zero tense’ used in previous works.
It should be stressed that cross-linguistically, not all morpho-phonologically reduced
tense forms are unsaturated for temporal and aspectual content. It has been argued in
Haspelmath (2021) that they can also associate with ‘lighter’ types of aspectuo-temporal
meanings—e.g., present or relative tense meanings (but see Becker 2022 for a divergent
view, and some possible caveats). However, we will restrict our definition of ‘zero-tense’ to
cases of absent or reduced material exponence in verbal morphology, combined with both
temporal and aspectual underspecification/context dependency—i.e., to a simultaneous
reduced formal and (aspectuo-temporal) semantic load in verbal morphology.
The importance of zero-tense (as here defined) for a general theory of tense is crosslin-
guistically conspicuous. Mentions of ‘zero tenses’ and/or ‘tenselessness’, were early made
in grammars of Maya languages (cf. Craig 1977;England 1983) as well as Creoles (Bickerton
1975,1981;Tagliamonte and Poplack 1993) and Pidgins (Ofuani 1984). Besides Maya lan-
guages (Carolan 2015), several families of American Indigenous languages were noted for
exhibiting tenselessness and/or zero tenses, as early as Baker and Travis’s (1997) account of
Mohawk modals. Of particular note are works on Salish (e.g., Matthewson 2006), Tupian (cf.
Tonhauser 2006,2011,2015;Pancheva and Zubizarreta 2020), and Otomanguean languages
(cf. Toosarvandani 2021), as well as comparative contributions on Southern American
Indigenous languages (Bertinetto 2014). Outside of the Americas, tenselessness and/or
zero tenses have also been identified in Inuit languages (e.g., West Greenlandic, cf. Shaer
2003;Bittner 2005,2008), but also Chinese (cf. Lin 2003,2010;Smith and Erbaugh 2005),
Vietnamese (cf. Duffield 2007;Bui 2019), Korean and Japanese (cf. Lee and Tonhauser 2010),
Austronesian languages (Samoan, cf. Bochnak 2016;Bochnak et al. 2019; Nakanai, cf. Bybee
1990, p. 90), African languages (Ngambai, cf. Bybee 1990; Hausa, cf. Mucha 2012,2013),
etc. Similar phenomena have also been investigated in various Creoles and Pidgins (cf.,
e.g., Singler 1990;Denny and Belgrave 2013;Yakpo 2019;Bybee 1990, p. 90)—with Sranan
and its ‘zero tense’ standing out as having been most extensively studied in that respect (cf.
Bickerton 1975,1981;Winford 2000;Seuren 2001;De Wit and Brisard 2014;De Wit 2016).
As we have seen above, no clear crosslinguistic generalization seems to emerge from
existing works as to what aspect parameters are most influential in determining the tempo-
ral interpretation of zero-tense, given an otherwise temporally empty context, and whether
these temporal effects are rigid (monotonic), or defeasible (non-monotonic). So far, dy-
namicity (for, e.g., Sranan, cf. De Wit 2016, pp. 121–24 and Bickerton 1975,1981
1
) and
boundedness (for Navajo and Mandarin Chinese, cf. Smith and Erbaugh 2005;Smith 2006,
2008;Smith et al. 2007) are the most frequently invoked aspectual parameters for past an-
choring effects on zero-tense, with stativity defeasibly associating with a present anchoring
effect. Following Smith (2008, p. 230) and Smith and Erbaugh (2005, p. 715, pp. 719–20), we
define boundedness as an event structural category interacting with aspectual viewpoint
types in significant ways. Bounded events are temporally limited (due to aspectual modi-
Languages 2023,8, 8 5 of 39
fiers, overt perfective viewpoint marking, or contextual information—especially discourse
structural context) and their runtime is strictly included within the reference time interval,
while unbounded events are temporally non-limited, and are selected by imperfective
viewpoints; the reference time interval must be included within their runtime—see, e.g.,
Mucha (2013, pp. 390–91). Grammatical aspectual viewpoints, aspectual adverbials and
some temporal connectives can make boundedness/unboundedness formally traceable, as
they are functions over event predicates with relevant selectional restrictions. However,
in the absence of such markers, it can also be determined by contextual factors at the
semantics/pragmatics interface—and in particular by discourse structural parameters, i.e.,
discourse relations in the sense of Asher and Lascarides (2003)—see Smith et al. (2007),
Smith (2006,2008) on the importance of the semantics/pragmatics interface for determining
boundedness in context. (See below for more on this important theoretical issue).
Through a detailed corpus study of Anindilyakwa data, and through additional
observations about two other Australian languages, we aim to enrich the crosslinguistic
picture drawn above. Our key research question will be to investigate to what extent
Anindilyakwa conforms or does not conform to the generalization that the aspectual
interpretation of zero tense-marked utterances constrains to a large extent their temporal
interpretation in the absence of other specifically temporal information, be it overt or
covert (cf. Bohnemeyer’s (2009) analysis if the role of temporal anaphora in the temporal
interpretation of tenseless Yucatec Maya utterances), and what type of aspectual parameters
can categorically vs. non-categorically (or monotonically vs. non-monotonically) contribute
to the temporal interpretation of zero tense.
The present paper will be structured as follows. In the remainder of this introduction,
Section 1.1 will provide the reader with a quick overview of the Anindilyakwa tense-aspect-
modality inflectional system, while Section 1.2 will discuss existing works on zero tense
and related phenomena, so as to refine our research question in their context. Section 2will
present our corpus methodology, i.e., how we constituted the main corpus and secondary
corpora we used (Section 2.1), and how they were annotated for various aspectuality- or
temporality-related parameters (Section 2.2); we will also expose some important theo-
retical assumptions underpinning our annotations w.r.t. the role of discourse structural
parameters (Section 2.3), and the relation between boundedness and aspectual viewpoint
(Section 2.4); Section 2.5 closes this methodological discussion with some observations
about the quality of our annotation procedure. Section 3will spell out the results of sev-
eral quantitative measurements we effected on our annotated corpora to ascertain the
role of certain parameters in determining the aspectual and temporal reading of a zero
tense-marked utterance, with special attention being paid to telicity (Section 3.2), dynamic-
ity/stativity (Section 3.3) and boundedness (Section 3.4) as the main aspectual contenders
for constraining the temporal anchoring of the Anindilyakwa zero tense-marked utter-
ances, and whether or not their temporal anchoring effects can be overridden by overt
or covert specifically temporal information (through, e.g., temporal anaphora). Section 4
focuses on assessing the limits (Section 4.1) as well as the language specific (Section 4.2)
and typological/comparative (Section 4.3) possible merits of the above results; we will
see that Anindilyakwa behaves at once like and unlike several other languages exhibiting
zero-tense phenomena. Anindilyakwa thus radically differs from, e.g., Sranan and Tuwuli
(and many Creoles and Pidgins, it seems) in that it does not treat dynamicity as a major
parameter determining the temporal interpretation of its zero tense, while it converges
with, e.g., Mandarin Chinese and Navajo, in that boundedness is the most influential
aspectual parameter for constraining the temporal anchoring of its zero tense-marked
utterances. We will also show that Bednall’s (2020) hypothesis that event atomicity (or
punctuality, if you will) rigidly determines a past temporal anchoring for zero tense in this
language is supported—a property which until Bednall’s (2020) initial observations had
gone unnoticed in the literature, and one that contradicts certain generalizations about
zero tense (as in Malchukov 2009 or Bybee 1990, where is its more or less clearly implied
that additional temporal information can override most, if not all aspect-inferred effects
Languages 2023,8, 8 6 of 39
of temporal anchoring on zero-tense). We will also briefly compare Anindilyakwa to two
other Australian languages, and formulate some potentially fruitful novel hypotheses for a
typology of zero tenses. Finally, we will conclude our investigations with Section 5.
1.1. The Anindilyakwa Language and Its TAM System
Anindilyakwa is a non-Pama-Nyungan language, spoken by over 1400 people living
on the Groote Eylandt archipelago, in the Northern Territory, Australia (see Department of
Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications, Australian Institute
of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies & Australian National University (2020),
and Figure 1). In the context of Australian Aboriginal languages, it is a fairly vibrant
language, and one of the few that is still being acquired by children.
Figure 1. Anindilyakwa and surrounding Top End languages (Harvey 2017).
Like many languages of northern Australia, Anindilyakwa is richly polysynthetic
and morphologically complex. Its inflectional TAM verbal paradigms are thus realized as
discontinuous morphs, cf. Carroll (2016). Verbal inflections are circumfix-like morphs, com-
bining two non-adjacent exponents—a portmanteau prefixed exponent bearing TAM and
pronominal information, and a separate TAM suffixed exponent, Bednall (2020, p. 26). Out
of twelve potential combinations of three distinct portmanteau prefixes (REALIS;IRREALIS;
IMPERATIVE.HORTATIVE) with four TAM suffixes (NO N-PAST;PAS T;UN DE RS PE CI FIE D (Ø);
POTENTIAL), ten effectively constitute TAM inflectional circumfixes, as shown in Table 1
(for further information see Bednall (2020), chapters 6 and 9). Following
Caudal et al. (2019)
,
we are analyzing each combination of prefix and suffix exponents as a single discontin-
uous TAM morph, i.e., as instance of so-called ‘distributed exponence’ in the sense of
Carroll (2016).
Note that while there are ten discontinuous TAM morphs (portmanteau prefixes +
TAM suffixes) in the verbal inflectional TAM system of Anindilyakwa (as shown in Table 1),
this paper focuses principally on the temporally and aspectually underspecified REAL-V-Ø
paradigm (see Bednall (2020) chapters 6 and 9 for discussion of other TAM paradigms).
Languages 2023,8, 8 7 of 39
Table 1. Anindilyakwa TAM circumfixal inflectional paradigms (positive polarity).
Portmanteau Prefix TAM Suffix
REALIS
NON-PAS T
PAST
UNDERSP EC IFIED (Ø)
IRREALIS
NON-PAS T
PAST
UNDERSP EC IFIED (Ø)
POTENTIAL
IMPERATI VE/HORTATIV E
NON-PAS T
UNDERSP EC IFIED (Ø)
POTENTIAL
In spite of its many verbal inflectional paradigms, the language is not endowed with
any synthetic aspectually specific tense (e.g., perfective vs. imperfective): in addition to a
general indicative present inflection, it possesses two aspectually underspecified indica-
tive inflections, namely an aspectually underspecified past tense paradigm (REAL-V-PAST,
cf. (1)), plus a temporally and aspectually underspecified TAM paradigm, with a phono-
logically null suffix exponent (RE AL-V-Ø, cf. (2)). However, Anindilyakwa does have
grammatical inflections with aspectually specific meaning—but they are analytic, not
synthetic inflections. For instance, it possesses at least a present and a past imperfective
periphrastic tense (NP ST=wiya or PST=wiya), consisting in the conventionalized combina-
tion of a NP ST or P ST inflection with an originally quantificational clitic (=wiya) (see the
structurally similar Jaminjung progressive, Schultze-Berndt 2012).) While initially limited
to subordinate clauses (3), these imperfective periphrastic tenses are currently undergoing
‘insubordination’ (cf. Evans and Watanabe 2016) (i.e., are increasingly found in matrix
clauses), which demonstrates their already grammaticalised nature – note that according to
Bednall (2020, p. 457), the Ø suffix in (3) associates with the indicative past tense inflection
for a special conjugation class of verbs (class 4), and is merely homophonous with zero
tense (i.e. zero tense and past tense paradigms are formally identical for this (small) verb
class).
(3) ning-alburre-na=wiya ni-yama-Ø
REAL.1>NEU T-split-NPST=QUANT REAL.3M-say-P ST
‘“I’m splitting it” he said’ [i.e., I’m in the middle of splitting it]
(Yingarna-lhangwa, A3369a Side2 a3.11) (Bednall 2020, p. 276)
Moreover, verbs marked with synthetic inflections (both the indicative past and the
zero inflection) can denote in-progress as well as habitual readings, which strongly suggests
these tenses can have a general imperfective viewpoint meaning, with all the standard
contextual variability found with so-called ‘general imperfectives’ (as defined in Bybee et al.
1994, p. 140); for more on the imperfective readings of the indicative past inflection, see, e.g.,
Bednall (2020, p. 178). Perfective meanings are also obviously attached to the Anindilyakwa
tense system, as it is capable of inchoative readings of stative utterances marked with either
the past (PS T) or zero inflection. These two facts militate in favour of assuming that
these two tenses can have both imperfective and perfective viewpoint readings, and are
aspectually underspecified rather than deprived of any viewpoint function—very much
as, i.e., in the case of certain Germanic past tenses; see, e.g., Caudal and Schaden (2005)
for a formal, underspecified analysis of the Alemannic Perfekt along similar lines. Note
that in sharp contrast with such tenses, e.g., Romance futures do not seem to semantically
incorporate viewpoint functions bearing on the verb stem they mark, as they bar in-progress
or inchoative readings, unless overt aspectual markers are added to that effect (e.g., the être
Languages 2023,8, 8 8 of 39
en train de ‘be in the process of’ progressive periphrasis in French). We conclude from this
contrast that Romance futures are deprived of viewpoint functions in their denotations (or
at least of viewpoint functions scoping directly over the denotation of the verb stem), while
the denotation of the Anindilyakwa zero tense or indicative past must incorporate some
semantically unsaturated, context-dependent viewpoint function.
Therefore, we will hypothesize that determining the viewpoint interpretation of the
Anindilyakwa zero inflection—but also of its past inflection—is a contextual matter: de-
pending on the presence of aspectuo-temporal VP modifiers, causo-temporal clitics, and
in general discourse structural parameters (i.e., SDRT discourse relations, Asher and Las-
carides 2003), a perfective, an imperfective, or a resultative (i.e., perfect-like) viewpoint
reading will be ascribed to those aspectually underspecified tenses. We will come back to
this central issue in the discussion of our annotation scheme below.
1.2. A Quick Overiew of Existing Analyses, and Some More Details on Our Research Question
The starting point for the present study is Bednall’s (2020) account of the zero in-
flection. According to this account, the temporal anchoring of REAL-V-Ø utterances is
largely determined by the event structural properties (Aktionsart) of the utterance: stative
utterances seem to favor a present anchoring, utterances denoting atomic telic events (cf.
Dowty 1986; i.e., achievements) impose a past interpretation, those denoting either atelic
dynamic events (i.e., activities and unbounded changes-of-state events) or non-atomic telic
events (i.e., accomplishments) are capable of both past and present readings, as shown in
Table 2.
Table 2. Temporal properties of aspectual types of REAL-V-Ø utterances in Bednall (2020, p. 219).
Temporal Anchoring States Activites +
Accomplishments Achievements
Past ×√ √
Present √ √ ×
This leads to the following principles that Bednall (2020, p. 222) posits (based on
similar principles of Smith and Erbaugh (2005), Smith (2006,2008), Smith et al. (2007),
Mucha (2013)), where atomic events (in the sense of Dowty (1986), and Caudal (1999))
correspond to non-scalar/non-incremental telic events (i.e., more or less to achievements,
see Caudal and Nicolas (2005)).
1.
The Deictic Principle: Runtimes of events are located with respect to Speech Time,
Smith et al. (2007, p. 44), Smith (2008, p. 231)
2.
The Simplicity Principle of Interpretation: Choose the interpretation that requires the
least information added or implied, Smith et al. (2007, p. 60);
3.
The Event Structure Properties Principle:
2
Interpret zero-marked sentences according
to the aspectual properties (i.e., event structure properties) of the event denoted by
the sentence (Smith et al. 2007, p. 61). a. Stativity Constraint: stative events are not
located in the past. b. Atomic Constraint: atomic (i.e., punctual) events are not located
in the present. c. Atelic dynamic events, and non-atomic telic events can freely anchor
in the past or the present (Bednall 2020, pp. 221–22).
4.
The Bounded Event Constraint (or ‘Deictic Principle of Temporal Interpretation’,
Smith 2006):
3
bounded events cannot anchor to the present (and conversely, presently
anchored events must be unbounded; Smith 2008, p. 230)—this constraint is partially
equivalent to the so-called perfective present paradox, given that perfective viewpoints
select for bounded events and they too, cannot anchor to the present, by and large;
see De Wit (2016).
Note that although it is mentioned in Bednall (2020, p. 221), the Bounded Event
Constraint does not feature in Bednall’s (2020) account of the Anindilyakwa zero tense.
And even more importantly, and in contrast to our rendering of Bednall’s (2020) proposal,
Languages 2023,8, 8 9 of 39
it must be stressed that Smith (2006, p. 97) added an important proviso to her different
versions of the Event Structure Properties (principle 3): it should hold “unless there is
explicit or contextual information to the contrary”. In other words, it is a defeasible type of
temporal anchoring inference for zero tenses. And logically enough, in Smith’s numerous
contributions, stative utterances are only located in the present by default (in contrast with
Bednall’s (2020) Stativity Constraint), cf. Smith and Erbaugh (2005, pp. 715–16) (see also De
Wit 2016 for related observations in Sranan)— nothing is said of Bednall’s (2020) ‘Atomic
Constraint’. Bybee (1990, pp. 12–13) and Malchukov (2009, p. 19) even make the stronger
claim that all event structure properties only provide ‘default’ temporal anchoring for
zero(-)tense-marked/tenseless utterances. The latter works seem to advocate a completely
non-monotonic approach to the calculus of temporal anchoring for zero tenses, as according
to them, overt or covert temporal information can override whatever temporal anchoring
is suggested by the event structure properties of an utterance. Such a view conflicts
with, e.g., Bednall’s and Bickerton’s/De Wit’s analyses where monotonic/categorical
(stativity and atomicity for Bednall, dynamicity for Bickerton/De Wit
4
) vs. non-monotonic
(or at least non-categorical) temporal effects of event structure are contrasted. It also
possibly conflicts with Smith’s various accounts, where the Bounded Event Constraint
seems monotonic/categorical, while her version of the Event Structure Properties Principle
is not—it is therefore unclear what her exact stance on the matter is.
Judging from the above discussion, there are both general theoretical disagreements
in the domain at stake—the monotonic vs. non-monotonic effects of some aspectual
parameters is disputed—and some divergences stemming from typological diversity—it
seems that not all event structure parameters are cross-linguistically equal for triggering
a present vs. a past temporal anchoring for zero-tense, in the absence of overt or covert
temporal information. By and large, in most languages exhibiting zero tense or zero-tense-
marked utterances, the following aspectual parameters seem to (at least potentially) have
temporal effects on zero tenses:
(a) the stativity vs. dynamicity parameter, with dynamic utterances (categorically)
anchoring in the past, and stative utterances anchoring (by default) in the present; this is
particularly clear in Sranan (Bickerton 1975,1981); see De Wit (2016, pp. 43–44, 115–39), for
a detailed study, but see also Bybee’s (1990) typological account
(b) the atelicity vs. telicity parameter, with telic utterances anchoring in the past, and
atelic utterances in the present, see in particular Smith and Erbaugh (2005, pp. 733–34)
for the effect of telicity on zero-marked verbs in Mandarin Chinese; the role of atomicity
vs. non-atomicity identified for Anindilyakwa in Bednall (2020) can be seen as deviating
from (and contradicting) this earlier proposal, with utterances denoting atomic telic events
(i.e., achievements) being rigidly past, vs. utterances describing non-atomic events (i.e.,
accomplishments) being either past or present
(c) the boundedness vs. unboundedness parameter, with bounded utterances mono-
tonically anchoring in the past (cf. Smith and Erbaugh 2005;Smith 2006;Smith et al.
2007), and unbounded utterances anchoring by default in the present; note that while
it might seem that (un)boundedness and (im)perfectivity are equivalent concepts, they
should nevertheless not be equated, as (i) they resort to two distinct kinds of aspectual
information (event structure vs. viewpoint aspect), and (ii) we assume that viewpoint in
Anindilyakwa is a three-valued, ternary parameter (perfective, imperfective, resultative)
whereas boundedness is a binary parameter (bounded, unbounded).
If Bednall’s (2020) analysis is correct, then Anindilyakwa behaves neither like Man-
darin Chinese or Navajo w.r.t. to its Event Structure Properties Principle: it can have
presently anchored (non-atomic) telic zero tense-marked utterances, and cannot anchor
stative zero tense utterances in the past. Bednall’s (2020) Stativity Constraints is also at
odds with, e.g., De Wit’s (2016, pp. 43–44) and Bybee’s (1990, pp. 12–13) claim that zero(-)
tense-marked stative utterances in other languages are capable of both present and past
anchoring, although their default anchoring (i.e., given a temporally empty context) is
present.
Languages 2023,8, 8 10 of 39
To illustrate Bednall’s (2020) Stativity Constraint, consider (4). According to Bednall
(2020, p. 119), (4a) is the only possible interpretation—the past rendering (4b) is not possible.
However, given the extreme rarity of stative verb roots in Anindilyakwa, and the natural
tendency for the be hungry root to anchor to the present in a conversational context (arguably
the default context in (4)), one might suspect that reading (4b) is merely extremely unlikely,
not impossible, and that the Stativity Constraint is unfounded; this certainly calls for further
examination of the matter at hand (especially given that speakers consistently reject past
temporal interpretations of such examples in elicitation contexts).
(4) ngayuwa ngu-m@reya-Ø anh@ngu=wa
1.PRO REAL.1-be.hungry-USP NEUT.food=ALL
a. ‘I’m hungry for food’
b. *I was hungry for food
(JL, 2016-07-15_01_JL, 00.15.27-00.15.32)
More generally, given apparent typological variations w.r.t. aspectual parameters
potentially influencing the temporal anchoring of zero tense utterances (i.e., dynamicity
for De Wit (2016), Bybee (1990), vs. boundedness for Smith and Erbaugh (2005), Smith
(2006,2008), Smith et al. (2007), vs. stativity and atomicity for Bednall (2020)), and given
also existing divergences concerning the possibility of these effects to be monotonic or
non (i.e., can their temporal effects be overridden by overt or covert/contextual temporal
information?), it seems highly desirable to conduct a detailed corpus investigation of zero
tense-marking as a test-bench for these multiple hypotheses. Opting for Anindilyakwa as
our testing language made a lot of sense, due to the apparently peculiar profile of its zero
tense. In most of the remainder of the paper, we expose a corpus study we conducted in
order to investigate various parameters possibly underlying the application of the Event
Structure Properties Principle and Bounded Event Principle to the Anindilyakwa zero tense,
while striving to determine to what extent temporal anaphora and temporal modification
can (or cannot) override the temporal effects of these aspectual parameters (i.e., whether or
not said effects are monotonic or non-monotonic).
2. Materials and Methods
The present quantitative investigation was conducted on a sub-set of a corpus of
roughly 100,000 words (well over 10,000 utterances, in the context of a polysynthetic
language), comprising 55 hours of elicitation material. The sub-set used for this study is
roughly one quarter of the total corpus: roughly 25,000 words. The three main types of
material making up our corpus specifically involve the following types of data:
•
Elicited utterances (particularly useful for getting at temporally empty contexts), either
through traditional questionnaires (especially as translation tasks), meta-linguistic
elicitation material (e.g., morphological flash cards), or experimental elicitation based
on the Event Description Elicitation Database (EDED, cf. Mailhammer and Caudal 2019);
see below, and Caudal & Mailhammer (this volume) for further details);
•
Oral narratives recorded in 2016–2019, as well as a collation of legacy narrative record-
ings (1970s–90s);
•A (partial) translation of the Bible (Bible Society in Australia 1992): Neningikarrawara-
angwa Ayakwa.
A precise break-down of our corpus according to the above data types is given in
Table 3.
Table 3. Break-down of our corpus according to data type (genre).
Data Type Audio Duration Word Count Percentage
Elicited data (translation tasks; stimuli-prompts)
15 h 16 min 25 s 19,906 81.60%
Spoken narratives 01 h 04 min 46 s 3789 15.53%
Translated text (Bible) - 699 2.87%
TOTAL 16 h 21 min 11 s 24,394
Languages 2023,8, 8 11 of 39
2.1. Constitution of Our Three Sub-Corpora
After extracting all indicative uses of the zero inflection from a collection of various
sources, we proceeded to annotate the resulting corpus so as to identify the role possibly
played by various aspectual parameters in determining the temporal interpretation of
zero tense utterances. We also randomly extracted and annotated a number of overt past
and non-past (i.e., present) marked verbs from the same collection of sources, to contrast
the aspectual profile of the zero tense with two other aspectually (but not temporally)
underspecified tenses. By and large, the idea behind this move is that event structure
parameters help determining the viewpoint interpretation of all three aspectually under-
specified tenses. As we will show below, the three Anindilyakwa indicative tenses tend
to associate with different types of event structural profiles (i.e., they predominantly com-
bine with different types of event structure parameters)—and this, we will see, is notably
related to their different temporal meanings (past for past tense, present for present tense,
and temporally underspecified for the zero tense). Our three annotated sub-corpora (in
the zero tense, the past tense and the non-past (=present) tense) and quantitative mea-
surements (plus some figures) are available in Supplementary Materials at the following
address: https://cloud.llf-paris.fr/nextcloud/s/yHNeLig7Bnf42by (accessed on 10 De-
cember 2022). The main, zero tense-marked sub-corpus comprises exactly 214 occurrences
of zero-inflected verbs; the two other sub-corpora, respectively comprise 101 occurrences
of past-marked verbs, and 22 occurrences of non-past-marked (=present-marked) verbs.
Despite the highly polysynthetic nature of the Anindilyakwa verb, and therefore
despite its so-called holophrastic nature in the sense of Fortescue (2016) (i.e., a single
Anindilyakwa verb can very well correspond to a full clause in English), each datapoint
in the annotated sub-corpora corresponds to a syntactic clause—mostly simple matrix
clauses (often comprising some NPs, adverbials, clitics, particles and connectives), but
some complement and adjunct clauses (especially temporal and causal subordinates) also
form some of our individual datapoints.
2.2. On Temporal and Aspectual Information Incorporated in Our Annotation Scheme
The most obvious feature of our annotation scheme is temporal: it must cover various
sources of temporal information at stake. Each datapoint—in effect, each (inflected) verb in
our corpus—is annotated for its temporal interpretation, either present or past, and for the
source of said interpretation. For elicited material, it originates in speakers’ judgements
(metalinguistic, and/or via the translations they offered), or contextual cues (overt temporal
prompts were sometimes used in experiments or translation tasks); for narratives (e.g.,
the Bible), this interpretation can be identified through translations. For all material,
temporal marking can be also linguistically traceable, either as overt marking (for instance
through temporal adverbials, cf., e.g., yarrungkwa ‘yesterday’) or from the verb’s linguistic
context (for instance when a zero tense-marked verb appears within a complex clause or is
coordinated with a past or present tense-marked verb). The latter configuration corresponds
to what Bohnemeyer (2009) dubbed ‘temporal anaphora’ (i.e., how referential chains
in discourse can propagate temporal information to otherwise temporally unspecified
utterances). Overall, 46% of our datapoints (both in narrative texts and elicited material)
presented clear temporal marking, either directly or in some connected discourse segment;
most remaining datapoints (all from elicited material) were also clearly either past or
present due to documented elicitation contexts.
Given the divergences noted above among existing works with respect to aspectual
parameters capable of influencing the temporal anchoring of a zero tense-marked utterance
across languages, it made perfect sense to adopt a very broad aspectual annotation scheme
for Anindilyakwa. Our annotation scheme covers all the event structure parameters
listed above as potential candidates: stativity, dynamicity, telicity and atomicity, plus
(un)boundedness. For the sake of being thorough, and in case some novel generalization(s)
could possibly emerge, we also annotated our corpus for a number of additional event
structure parameters, including, e.g., scalarity cf., e.g., Kennedy and McNally (2005),
Languages 2023,8, 8 12 of 39
Kennedy (2012), Beavers (2013) (this makes perfect sense as atomicity vs. non-atomicity
is essentially a matter of event scalarity) semelfactivity, pluractionality/iterativity and
habituality, and even tried to distinguish various subtypes of boundedness combining, e.g.,
pluractionality with non-pluractionality, contextual boundedness vs. overt boundedness—
see Appendix A. As it turned out that none of these extra parameters or sub-parameters had
special effects on the temporal anchoring of zero tense (except in so far they can determine
our key aspectual parameters, especially atomicity, telicity or stativity: we notably treated
habitual utterances as being stative, and unbounded iterative utterances as atelic dynamic
utterances, for which atomicity is an irrelevant feature; we also treated inchoative readings
of atelic roots as denoting atomic telic events), we will simply leave them aside in the
rest of the paper, and focus instead on the already identified potential culprits: stativity,
dynamicity, telicity, atomicity and boundedness.
We also annotated our datapoints for viewpoint interpretation, and discourse parame-
ters influencing it (mostly, discourse relations àla Asher and Lascarides 2003); as indicated
above, we assume that the Anindilyakwa zero tense can take three distinct aspectual view-
point readings, depending on contexts—namely perfective, imperfective, and resultative
viewpoint meanings (so that again, viewpoint should not be equated with boundedness).
The existence of resultative, perfect-like viewpoint readings of that tense is demonstrated
by its ability to combine with aspectual adverbials (and interactional contexts) requiring a
resultative, ‘perfect-state’ type of reading in the sense of Nishiyama and Koenig (2010), cf.
arakb(a), which means ‘now, already’ in (5). We have argued above that inchoative readings
triggered by the zero tense suggests it can contribute a perfective viewpoint function,
whereas in-progress readings of that same tense suggest it can denote an imperfective
viewpoint function. The latter type of reading is particularly clear with, e.g., temporal
subordinating markers meaning ‘as, when’ (cf. clitic =manja) in (6).
(5) dhukwa arakb ni-yedha-Ø-m=dha
maybe COMPL.ACT REAL.3M-arrive-US P=S Type=TRM
‘Maybe he [has] already arrived’
(JL, JRB1-042-01, 00:11:26-00:11:42)
(6) nginu-maka-Ø=ma neniyarringka nungw-arrka
REAL.3M>1-tell-PST=SType 3M.respected.old.man 3M.father-KI N.1
yirr-ambilyu=manja Yingakumanje=ka ena
REAL.1A-stay.PST=LOC place.name=EMPH NE UT.this
alhawudhawarra
NEUT.story
‘My old father told me this story when we were staying at Yingakumanja’
(Dingarna-langwa akwa wurruwarda-langwa A3369a Side1 a3.5)
We also annotated our corpus for various aspectual features stemming from the inter-
action between viewpoint aspect and event structure aspect—such as aspectual coercion,
as in cases of iterative/habitual readings of telic verbs, or inceptive/inchoative readings
of stative verbs, as in (7). See De Swart (1998) for a general, foundational discussion, and
Caudal & Mailhammer (this volume) for a case study of related phenomena in another
Australian language. The existence of such coercion effects is an additional argument for
ascribing the Anindilyakwa zero tense an underspecified viewpoint meaning, rather than
no viewpoint meaning at all, as is, e.g., the case in (7), where aspectual particle arakba
enforces a bounded reading of the event, and an inchoative reading of the stative verb
‘be stuck’—which requires a perfective viewpoint reading of the zero tense inflection. It
marks a temporal succession after a completed event in this non-resultative, sequence-of-
events context, and seems to be a polysemous particle, of the ‘now-already’ vs. ‘then’ type,
common across Australian languages; cf., e.g., Ritz and Schultze-Berndt (2015).
Languages 2023,8, 8 13 of 39
(7)
arakba wurri-rn-dh@rnd-arrngwa iya wurr-ak@na
COMPL.ACT 3A.REDUP(?)-mother-3A.KI N and 3A-that
wurru-ngwu-ngw-arrngwa na-wurrak-aburiya-Ø
3A.REDUP(?)-father-3A.KI N REAL.3A-many-be.stuck-USP
arakba arrawu=wa
COMPL.ACT underneath=AL L
‘their mothers and fathers were stuck [=became stuck] in the ground’
(JL, A3369b Side1, a4.2 Jigagwa-langwa-langwa daburradikba
akwulyangburarrka ‘Her daughter’s dream’)
Note that whenever this was contextually clear, unbounded single events as well as
unbounded iterated and habitual events were differentiated from bounded readings of
single-event activities or states, or bounded pluractional and in general iterated events
(with, e.g., semelfactive verbs, cf. English ‘knock’) on the basis of, e.g. sequence-of-events
contexts; see (8) where an atelic ball-rolling event is effectively interpreted as bounded, as
the ball hits a wall before coming to a stop.
(8) y-aka yirrburrbula n-angkarra-Ø m-@k@na
MASC-this MAS C.ball REAL.MASC-roll-USP VEG-that
[nu?]ma-jama-Ø ak@na wall=a akwa
REAL.VEG-do-PST NE UT.that NEU T.wall= PF and
[n@?]-nguwanj@-n=dha
REAL.NEUT(?)-stop-PST =TRM
‘The ball rolled, hit the wall and stopped’
(ST, JRB1-034-01, 00.16.53-00.17.00)
We will here consider that unbounded event structures (including some accomplish-
ments in our zero tense sub-corpus) are selected for by imperfective viewpoint functions,
whereas bounded event structures (including atelic ones, sometimes; see, e.g., (8)) are
selected for by perfective or resultative viewpoint functions (this will be justified below),
as well as dedicated clitics, particles or connectives (see below the discussion of rhetorical
relations). (Un)boundedness (and therefore, viewpoint to a large extent) is often enforced by
so-called case clitics in Anindilyakwa, especially those marking temporal subordination—
cf., e.g., the manji=kba=dha clitic complex in (9), where the ‘denizen’ case marker =kba
enforces temporal posteriority, determining a perfective or resultative viewpoint reading,
and from there a bounded event reading. Vice versa, case marker =manja routinely marks
‘when’ temporal subordinates (Bednall 2020, pp. 263–270), and often triggers an imper-
fective viewpoint interpretation of the inflection, and an unbounded event reading of the
verb (cf. (8) above). BD MAX notes in our corpus bounded events arising from a special
prosodic lengthening of the final syllable of the VP or verb, associated with a (marked)
temporal duration (plus an event temporal ordering), possibly combined with clitic =wa
(see Caudal & Mailhammer (this volume)), and noted with three semi-colons (:::) in our
Anindilyakwa data. This signals an (extended) bounded durative reading of a clause (P1),
and its temporal anteriority to the following clause (P2), cf. (10)—i.e., it means something
like ‘for a long time/for a while P1, then P2
0
; see Bednall (2020, pp. 242-247) and Caudal &
Mailhammer (this volume). In this example, the bi:::ya discourse connective/conjunction,
especially with the ‘for a long time’ intonation (:::), enforces a sequence-of-events discourse
structure (a Narration discourse relation, in the sense of Asher and Lascarides 2003). Fol-
lowing Caudal (2012), we claim that discourse relations can determine aspectual viewpoint
information via specific aspectuo-temporal axioms, or because of their inference rules. In
short, bi:::ya imposes a perfective viewpoint reading of the zero tense marking because
it imposes the Narration discourse relation, so that a perfective viewpoint, and bounded,
inchoative reading of the zero tense-marked ‘be cooked’ verb must hold; bi:::ya nu-walyuwu-
Ø-manji=kba=dha can be paraphrased as ‘then after some time it became really cooked’—see
the following section for more on this important issue.
Languages 2023,8, 8 14 of 39
(9) bi:::ya nu-walyuwu-Ø=manji=kba=dha, y-akina
and.then.XTD REAL.3M-be.cooked-USP=LOC=DENIZ=TRM MASC-that
yimarndakuwaba y-inumalye=ka=dangba
MASC.blue.tonged.lizard
MASC-good?=EMPH=E MPH
‘When at last that blue-tongued lizard was cooked to perfection, it was the fattiest, juiciest
blue-tongued lizard that ever was’ (Kwurrirda Kwurrirda-langwa, A3369a Side1 a3.3)
(10) yingi-rukwulyaka-Ø ying-angkarru:::-Ø=wa,
REAL.3F-go.around-PST REAL. 3F-fly.XTD-USP =P L
ying-arjiyi-nga akuwabijina awurukwa
REAL.3F-stand-CofS-Ø beside NE UT.billabong
‘She flew down and circled round and round (until) she stood at the edge of the
billabong’ (GL, A3369a Side1, a3.7 Nimimba-langwa akwa nenikuwenikba-langwa
‘The blind man’)
2.3. Some Theoretical Reflections about the Role of Discourse Structure in Our Annotation and
Analysis
An important result garnered in the 1990
0
s and 2000
0
s through works about the
interplay between aspectuo-temporal meanings and discourse structure, notably through
DRT (Kamp and Reyle 1993;Molendijk and de Swart 1999)) or SDRT based-analyses (Asher
1993;Lascarides and Asher 1993a,1993b;Lascarides and Oberlander (1993), De Mulder and
Vetters (1999), a.o., see Caudal 2012 for an extended discussion) was the key role played by
discourse structural parameters qua discourse relations, in the sense of the SDRT framework
(Asher and Lascarides 2003): these constrain aspectual types of tenses (or their aspectual
interpretation, when they are aspectually polyfunctional or underspecified), and vice versa.
The interaction of discourse connectives and clitics/particles with both discourse relations
and aspectuo-temporal meaning in context was established more recently (cf., e.g., Bras
et al. 2001)—but it is central to understanding Anindilyakwa, which, like many Australian
languages, makes abundant use of such markers to specify causo-temporal ordering of
events in discourse (cf., e.g., Ritz and Schultze-Berndt 2015), and discourse structure in
general.
In a sense, discourse structural approaches to the interpretation of tenses in context
started as an attempt at capturing the gist of a well-known typological generalization
about the ‘backgrounding’ function of imperfective tenses, vs. ‘foregrounding’ function of
perfective tenses, as found in, e.g., Hopper (1979) – but our current understanding of the
interplay between discourse relations and aspect now extends well beyond this.
We will here follow Caudal’s (2012,2023) proposal that tenses should be treated as
functions over sets of discourse relations, since tenses constrain (through their viewpoint
meaning) the types of discourse relations they are compatible with—and reciprocally.
Indeed, aspectual viewpoint conditions must appear in inference rules for discourse rela-
tions, and in axiomatic consequences of established discourse relations (discourse relations
require certain aspectual viewpoint conditions). To give an example justifying such a
hypothesis, consider how aspectual viewpoint meaning differences correlate with striking
discourse structural differences in the case of the French passésimple vs. passécomposé.The
French passésimple seems to be restricted to narrative discourse relations such as Narration,
Result (these relations require perfective viewpoint tenses to be established), Occasion or
Elaboration, while disallowing reverse causal discourse relations such as Explanation (or
even Background
Forward
) (these relations require resultative viewpoint tenses given a strict
temporal ordering between events) cf. (11a) vs. (12a). A discourse segment in the passé
composé, on the other hand, can also be introduced through Explanation (though not Back-
ground
Forward
), as it can convey a resultative viewpoint meaning, cf. (11b) vs. (12b) (see,
e.g., Molendijk and de Swart 1999,Caudal 2012 for similar empirical observations).
Languages 2023,8, 8 15 of 39
(11) a. Mon fils arriva en retard àl’école. L’instituteur le gronda.
(Narration/Result)
My son come-PS.3sg in late at the.school. The teacher PRO.3sg scold-PS.3sg
b. Mon fils est arrivéen retard àl’école. L’instituteur l’a grondé
(Narration/Result)
My son be.PR.3sg come-PP in late at the.school. The teacher PRO.3sg-have.PR.3sg scold-PP
‘My son was late at schoolCause. The teacher scolded himEffect.’
(12) a. L’instituteur gronda mon fils. #Il arriva en retard àl’école.
(#Explanation)
The teacher scold-PS3sg my son. He arrive-PS.3sg in late at the.school
b. L’instituteur a grondémon fils. OK Il est arrivéen retard àl’école.
(Explanation)
The teacher have.PR.3sg scold-PP my son. He be.PR.3sg arrive-PP in late at the.school
‘The teacher has scolded my sonEffect. He has been late at schoolCause .’
We believe equivalent associations between viewpoint meaning and discourse rela-
tions can be identified even for the Anindilyakwa zero tense. For instance (5) seems to illus-
trate an argumentative variant of the Explanation relation determined by world-knowledge
and compatible with the French passécomposéin (12b)—let us call it Argu.Explanation—as
opposed to (7), where a discourse segment is introduced by a Narration discourse relation,
as the second clause is in (11a/b). Although (12b) construes a (conversational) narrative
discourse sequence while (5) performs an argumentative epistemic speculation (a tentative
explanation) answering some overt or covert dialogical move (a question), both Explanation
in (12b) and Argu.Explanation in (5) require a resultative viewpoint reading of the novel
segment they introduce. This is evidenced by the impossibility of using the French passé
simple with such a reading in (12a), and the ‘already, now’, interpretation of arakba in (5),
contrasting with its ‘then/afterwards’ reading with the Narration in (7)). And just like
Narration in (11) seamlessly associates with the perfective viewpoint meaning of the passé
simple and passécomposé, this discourse relation triggers a perfective reading of the zero
tense in (7).
The strong connection between viewpoint aspect and rhetorical relations demon-
strated by the (12a/12b) contrast, or the (5)/(7) contrast, is modelled in Caudal (2012) by
incorporating viewpoint restrictions in semantic axioms attached to particular discourse
relations, and/or as preconditions for establishing them. For instance, Narration(
α
,
β
) will
require the newly introduced segment
β
to associate with a perfective viewpoint reading,
and to be temporally and causally subsequent to its attachment segment
α
. It cannot be
the case that e
α
overlaps with e
β
,
5
and this holds true of all sequence-of-event inducing
rhetorical relations (namely Narration,Result and Occasion). This set of discourse relations
was marked Narr in our annotated zero tense corpus. In contrast, a distinct temporal or-
dering holds for Background
Forward
(
α
,
β
) and Background
Backward
(
α
,
β
)—e
α
must then overlap
with e
β
. (see Asher et al. (2007), Caudal (2012) for details on why this is the case).
6
With
Background
Backward
(
α
,
β
) the newest, latest segment
β
is foregrounded, and must be perfec-
tively interpreted—in other words, the background discourse segment
α
is introduced prior
to the foreground discourse segment
β
. The opposite holds true with Background
Forward
(
α
,
β
):
the backgrounded segment
β
is novel, and introduced after the foregrounded, perfective
viewpoint bearing segment
α
. In our annotated corpus, we respectively noted these two
discourse relations BackFore (with the novel discourse segment being foregrounded) and
Backgr (with the novel discourse segment being backgrounded).
The use of such aspectual viewpoint conditions attached to semantic axioms or infer-
ence rules of rhetorical relations was central to our annotation procedure in cases where
linguistic markers did not constrain the viewpoint interpretation of zero tense. Whenever
causo-temporal ordering between events as well as discourse relations could be reasonably
inferred from discourse structural markers and/or common-sense reasoning, we were able
to identify the viewpoint reading involved, and from there whether the event at stake was
bounded or unbounded—alongside with some (rare) aspectual coercion effects.7
Three types of discourse relations stand out as being the most common in our zero
tense sub-corpus: the three ’sequence-of-event’ discourse relations Narration, Occasion and
Result (Narr in our annotation), where the novel segment receives a perfective reading, and
the attachment segment can vary, aspectually, Background
Backward
, where the (novel) attached
Languages 2023,8, 8 16 of 39
segment has a perfective viewpoint reading (unless it is a topic-denoting expression, like a
framing adverbial) and the attachment segment generally has an imperfective viewpoint
reading, and Background
Forward
, where the opposite holds true (the attached segment has
an imperfective viewpoint reading). In addition to the above, some rare non-narrative
instances of argumentative discourse relations were also identified in our zero tense corpus;
they helped us identify data points where the zero inflection seemed to receive a resultative,
perfect-like viewpoint reading; as indicated above, we noted such relations Argu.
To illustrate how we were able to tease apart those various parameters and their
interactions without running serious risks of circularity, consider example (13). Given
the translation proposed, the presence of connective akena and our world knowledge
about hunting, there is no doubt that the running away event interrupts (and contrasts
with) the hunting event. So that the second segment must be attached to the first via a
combination of Contrast and Background
backward
(BackFore in our annotation),
8
with the novel
segment being foregrounded and perfectively viewed. In other words, the running event
marks a perfective discrepancy upon the imperfective backgrounded hunting event (its
imperfectivity is reflected by its English translation), and is temporally posterior to the
onset of the hunting event. As n-angkarra-Ø must be perfectively interpreted given such
a discourse structure, the (normally) atelic running event predicate fed to the perfective
viewpoint contribution of zero tense (in this context) must be coerced into a change-of-
state, ‘start to run away/run off/run away’ predicate in this context—hence, it should be
annotated as a case of inchoative reading of an activity predicate (inchoative activity/ATM
INCH).
(13) nu-ngurrkwa-rn@=ma yiburadhu=wa
REAL.3M>M AS C-hunt-PST=SType MASC.wallaby=AL L
akena n-angkarra-Ø
but REAL.M ASC-run-USP
‘[The man] was hunting the wallaby, but it ran away’ (ST, JRB1-034-01,
00.06.53-00.07.01)
As we will see, our quantitative results confirm that viewpoint meaning and discourse
structure closely interact in the contextual interpretation of zero tense in Anindilyakwa, and
can impact its temporal interpretation to some extent (as can the related, yet distinct param-
eter of (un)boundedness). However, this is hardly a surprise, in light of past observations
about Arabic, Yucatec Maya and Hausa, i.e., ‘tenseless’—but not ‘aspect-less’—languages
where aspectual viewpoint information (morphologically marked in these languages) can
also partly determine the temporal anchoring of verbs in context.
2.4. On the Close Association of (Un)boundedness with Viewpoint
The close association between (un)boundedness and viewpoints in our analysis first
rests on the following theoretically common double assumption (see, e.g., Depraetere 1995;
Smith 2006, etc.): perfective viewpoints select for bounded event predicates, whereas im-
perfective viewpoints select for unbounded event predicates. Additionally, we hypothesize
that resultative viewpoint (perfect-like) readings of the Anindilyakwa zero tense also select
for bounded event predicates. Although they have present relevance in some sense, we
have nevertheless classified resultative uses of the zero tense as past, since they locate
a causing event in the past, while entailing some present, contextual ‘perfect state’ àla
Nishiyama and Koenig (2010). Furthermore, we treated them as a type of viewpoint reading
selecting for bounded event structure as their past causal event is also part of their at-issue
content—somewhat like the French passécomposé, we believe; see Caudal (2015).
The triple assumption obviously relates to the well-known generalization found in
numerous works (notably) inspired by De Swart (1998), that tenses are functions over
aspectual types of event predicates (i.e., event structural types), and as such, possess
aspectual selectional restrictions—which when they are not met, can give rise to aspectual
mismatches, and possibly trigger aspectual coercion effects (which we take to be separate,
conventionalized uses of tenses). Our data is clearly in line with this observation. For
Languages 2023,8, 8 17 of 39
instance, it reveals that perfective (and resultative) viewpoint readings of the Anindilyakwa
zero tense can occur with lexically atelic verbs (or reduplicated/iterated verbs), only in
case those receive a bounded reading, whether inchoative (through coerced readings of
stative utterances, mostly) or durative. In a similar vein, both atelic and non-atomic telic
(accomplishment) utterances appeared in our corpus with imperfective viewpoint reading,
but telic utterances could not be found with prospective/proximative/futurate readings
(cf. English John was leaving =John was about to/intended to leave)—such coerced, modal
readings are unavailable to the Anindilyakwa zero tense, as they (predictably) are with other
aspectually underspecified tenses (including, e.g., the English simple past). And last but
not least, we observed that atomic telic (achievement) utterances with zero marking could
only associate with bounded, past perfective or perfect-like, resultative interpretations.
9
All
these facts suggest that the contextual viewpoint reading of the Anindilyakwa zero tense
selects for certain event structure parameters structure parameters, including boundedness.
Crucially, while the bounded/unbounded distinction is relevant to the semantics of
aspectual viewpoints, it should nevertheless not be equated with it. Not only is there not
two, but three basic viewpoint values one can cross-linguistically distinguish, cf. Caudal
(2012) (including with the Anindilyakwa zero tense), but boundedness does not correlate
with the semantic complexity of viewpoint. For instance, there is much more to the
sometimes distinctly modal, futurate/proximative interpretation of the English progressive
with a telic (especially achievement) utterance (cf. ‘I’m leaving’, meaning ‘I intend to/will
leave soon’) than what the mere notion of unboundedness can capture. Similarly, the
discourse structural and contextual behavior of perfective vs. resultative viewpoints differs
in ways which cannot be explained straightforwardly with simple boundedness—see,
e.g., Nishiyama and Koenig’s (2010) notion of ‘perfect state’, and how it is contextually
dependent, and the discussion below of the discourse structural contrast between ‘pure’
perfective tenses, and tenses with resultative viewpoint meanings – cf. (11)-(12) above.
2.5. Some Reflections on the Quality and Controlled Nature of Our Annotation Procedure
As it was not possible to find additional (L1 Anindilyakwa speaker) annotators to
participate, we have striven to maximize the quality of our annotation by other means.
Our annotation scheme was therefore iterated and corrected in several distinct steps. Both
authors annotated the zero tense sub-corpus twice (with an interval of 3 to 6 months
between each pass), followed by a detailed discussion of each disagreement found in
our respective annotations—this constituted our first four annotation passes. A fifth
annotation pass was conducted by Author 1 to remove remaining inconsistencies and
errors in the annotation. Finally, Author 2 conducted a retro-translation task in the field,
associated with a metalinguistic discussion of each problematic example. This constituted
the sixth and final pass on our annotation. Whenever it was impossible to ascertain
which aspectual viewpoint/(un)boundedness reading should obtain, we set apart the
corresponding examples from the relevant quantity measurements—this mostly concerns
examples occurring in iterative/habitual contexts, plus a handful of accomplishment
utterances (11 examples, in total).
Given the mutual dependence of viewpoint/boundedness and discourse structural
information, one might be concerned that our annotation runs serious risks of circularity.
However, (im)perfectivity and (un)boundedness are often constrained by linguistic means
in our corpus. About 25% of our datapoints comprised overt aspectual adverbials or
equivalent markers with various effects on viewpoint and/or boundedness, another 40%
comprised discourse connectives, particles, clitics or discourse patterns enforcing specific
(or easy to identify) discourse relations, themselves imposing specific viewpoints on some
segments. At the end of the day, only 54 utterances were completely deprived of any
overt aspectual linguistic marking or linguistically recoverable aspectual information
(either directly, or through some connected discourse segment) supporting our aspectuo-
temporal annotations, half of which happen to describe achievements, and have a rigid
past perfective reading, as we will see. This left us with a list of roughly 25 potentially
Languages 2023,8, 8 18 of 39
problematic datapoints originating in elicitation tasks—about 10% of our zero tense sub-
corpus—more than half of which could be semantically clarified by their prompting context
(see below), and/or were clarified thanks to a retro-translation task and further discussions
with Anindilyakwa language speakers. Eventually, only 11 utterances turned out to be
effectively problematic, and left out from (un)boundedness-related (and (im)perfecitivty-
related) quantitative measurements. This shows how limited the risk of circularity in our
aspectual annotation really is.
Finally, 46% of our datapoints (both in narrative texts and elicited material) offered a
linguistically observable temporal meaning, either directly through adverbials, or indirectly
because zero-marked clauses were coordinated or subordinated to temporally marked
clauses (with past/present tense inflections, or temporal adverbials, and in general ‘tempo-
ral anaphora’ àla Bohnemeyer 2009). Most other utterances could be temporally interpreted
through translations and/or metalinguistic judgements cast by Anindilyakwa language
speakers. Again, only a handful of utterances turned out to be temporally problematic—
all among the 11 utterances already problematic for aspectual (viewpoint/boundedness)
meaning.
In addition to this, the very manner in which our data points had been collected
10
offered precious information concerning their contextual or aspectuo-temporal context,
and this contributed to ensuring the quality of our annotation whenever aspectuo-temporal
information was scarce. Elicited material marked as ‘visual stimuli’ were collected using
the Event Description Elicitation Database (EDED), which consists of roughly 250 video clips
arrayed in distinct experimental protocols, so as to obtain naturally occurring descriptions
of single events or complex series of events, involving various kinds of event structures,
and viewpoint parameters. Aspectual interpretations for this material are very constrained,
as the EDED clips were specifically construed to elicit special even structure types, with a
specific temporal anchoring being prompted (mostly in the past), alongside with specific
temporal ordering between events wherever multiple events are involved (e.g., an event
of someone sitting down, followed by an even of someone sneezing once), as well as
‘viewpoint’ parameters (overlapping vs. non-overlapping events, complete vs. incomplete
events). Such temporal ordering information was often precious in determining discourse
relations during our annotation procedure. As a result, assigning aspectual interpretations
for this type of material was generally straightforward. Prompts associated with our
elicited datapoints were systematically added to our sub-corpora, whenever they were
relevant—even more so given the fact that we had established classical Vendlerian tests (cf.
Vendler 1957) for the relevant verbs using dedicated questionnaires, see Bednall (2021).
In translation tasks, when temporal information was not overtly marked by modifiers,
we could often determine existing temporal anaphora effects on the basis of prompts
offered by linguists (English to Anindilyakwa), or through metalinguistic judgements cast
by native speakers (Anindilyakwa to English). For narratives, temporal anaphora effects
often obtained from the surrounding context (in the case of the Bible translation, this is
rather trivial: outside of reported speech, a contextual past anchoring always prevails).
These judgements were obviously unproblematic for speakers, except for some utterances
denoting atelic dynamic events (activities) or non-atomic telic events (accomplishments),
and for perfect-like readings of zero-marked utterances (the latter types of utterances are
rare in our corpus, so this was not a major concern anyway). However, whenever necessary,
we checked the relevant datapoints through retro-translations and metalinguistic tasks in
the field at a later stage.
3. Results of Our Quantitative Study
After annotating our zero sub-corpora as described above, we analyzed the data
using two quantitative techniques: one well suited to small samples (but not so efficient
with unbalanced samples), namely Fisher’s exact test,
11
or FET, and a classic chi-square
(though less problematic with unbalanced samples, it is also less efficient with small
samples—as we will see, in most cases, it turned out not to be a valuable test).
12
Both
Languages 2023,8, 8 19 of 39
FET and chi-square test the independence hypothesis H0; if p< 0.05, then given a 2
×
2 matrix of categorical variables with opposite values (e.g., A: ‘present’ vs. B: ‘past’),
then the categorical variables are deemed dependent, and H0 is rejected. We used these
tests to determine which binary parameters (thus construing ‘opposite’ categories) of our
annotation scheme could possibly constrain the temporal anchoring interpretation of zero-
inflected Anindilyakwa verbs. It will notably appear that so-called temporal anaphora and
overt temporal marking contribute to the temporal anchoring of certain aspectual types
zero tense-marked utterances in Anindilyakwa, (e.g., state and activity-denoting utterances)
but not of others (e.g., atomic telic (=achievement) utterances). With accomplishment (non-
atomic telic in our terminology) denoting utterances, in the absence of overt or contextual
temporal anchoring, aspectual parameters seem to play a more subtle role. But as we
will see, at least one almost categorical aspectual parameter can be identified, namely
boundedness. However, before discussing the results of these quantitative measurements,
we will briefly present some preliminary observations and empirical generalizations based
on simple numeric counts and percentages, about the aspectuo-temporal profile of the
Anindilyakwa zero tense, and how it differs from (or is similar to) the other two indicative
synthetic inflections.
3.1. Some Preliminary Observations and Empirical Generalizations: Zero Tense vs. Other
Indicative Tenses, and Event Structure Types
According to Table 2(Section 1.2), two types of event structures can give rise to cate-
gorical temporal effects: (i) atomic event predicates contributed by REAL-V-Ø utterances
should only have past temporal interpretations (see Bednall’s (2020) ‘Atomic Constraint’)
while (ii) stative event predicate should only have present temporal interpretations when
conveyed by REAL-V-Ø utterances (this is Bednall’s (2020) ‘Stativity Constraint’). Simple
occurrence counts in our corpus study are sufficient to validate (i), as 85 out of 85 instances
of utterances denoting telic atomic events (i.e., achievements) are anchored in the past.
They are also sufficient to invalidate (ii), as 12 out of our 23 stative utterances anchor in the
past without said past events being inchoatively re-interpreted, or treated as instances of
bounded states; in other words, even such past stative utterances denote bona fide states.
As was already mentioned above, in some cases, it was somewhat difficult to as-
certain whether an accomplishment utterance was truly anchored in the present, and
imperfectively viewed—three relevant utterances were therefore excluded from certain
measurements. Even more tellingly, especially in cases of elicited iterative or habitual uses,
it was difficult to determine whether a bounded/perfective or unbounded/imperfective
of pluractional/iterated or habitual reading should prevail—this caused us to set apart
an additional eight utterances for certain measurements. Thus, while the translation of
(14) suggests a perfective iterative reading, that of (15) is extremely unclear as to the exact
aspectual interpretation of the sequence.
(14)
angkawura angkwabab
@
rna
n@-lh@ka-Ø en=lhang=wa angalya
one.day always RE AL.3M-go-US P
3M.PRO=POSS=ALL
NEUT.place
‘he went to his house several times’
(JL, JRB1-049-01, 00.09.25-00.09.34)
(15) arakb@wiya angkab@b@rnama n@-lh@ka-Ø en=lhang=wa
long.ago always REAL.3M-go-USP 3M.PRO=POSS=ALL
angalya
NEUT.place
‘like several times, many times, or several times he used to- went- walked to
his house’
(JL, JRB1-049-01, 00.13.00-00.13.20)
Event structure classes are represented as indicated in Table 4, with telic atomic (i.e.,
achievement) event predicates utterances being by far the most common event predicate
type in our zero tense corpus (with almost 40% of all zero tense-marked utterances), and
telic utterances in general representing the majority of our zero tense datapoints (54%);
Languages 2023,8, 8 20 of 39
utterances denoting change-of-state events even reach a staggering 76% of all zero tense-
marked utterances. ‘Non-telic’ change-of-state events incorporate semelfactives, bounded
states, activities or event pluralities, and inchoative readings of stative roots—all other
atelic dynamic events have an unbounded reading. Unbounded events are outnumbered
by bounded events (23+16=39 vs. 48+31+85=164); note the small class (11 datapoints) of
dynamic events whose boundedness could not be determined (‘uncertain dynamic’)—these
were not included in our quantitative measurements.
Table 4. Event structure classes in our corpus of zero-inflected verbs.
Event Structure Class Number of Verb Forms Percentage
States (-BD) 23 10.75%
Atelic dynamic events (-BD) 16 7.48%
Uncertain dynamic (+/-BD) 11 5.14%
Non-telic change-of-state events (+BD) 48 22.43%
Non-atomic telic (Accomplishments) (+BD) 31 14.49%
Atomic telic (Achievements) (+BD) 85 39.72%
Total 214
Figure 2below offers a visual rendering of Table 4, revealing that telic (and change-of-
state) utterances are indeed predominant in the sample.13
Figure 2. Event structure composition of our zero-inflected sub-corpus.
This strong bias of zero tense marking towards change-of-state meanings is not found
within our non-past (=present) sub-corpus. Table 5even reveals a categorically opposite
distribution of event structure types in said sub-corpus, as it only comprises atelic verbs de-
noting unbounded event types, with an imperfective viewpoint meaning being contextually
ascribed to the non-past tense. Verbs lexically describing telic atomic events (achievements)
do appear, but must receive coerced readings, with a progressive, futurate/prospective
reading (16) or hortative/volitional reading, or are coerced into scalar ‘degree achievement’
events (17) (in effect, these involve unbounded change-of-state predicates, i.e., as atelic
dynamic event predicates)—note that such coerced readings are not found within our zero
tense corpus with telic utterances.
Languages 2023,8, 8 21 of 39
Table 5. Event structure classes in our sub-corpus of non-past (= present)-inflected verbs.
Event Structure Class Number of Verb Forms Percentage
States 10 45.45%
Atelic dynamic events 12 54.55%
Non-telic change-of-state events 0 0.00%
Non-atomic telic (Accomplishments) 0 0.00%
Atomic telic (Achievements) 0 0.00%
Total 22
(16) ngumu-ngwanja-j@-na=ma duraka
REAL.1>VEG-stop-CAUS-NPST=SType VE G.car
‘I’m stopping the car’ (progressive or prospective/futurate reading)
(JL, JRB1-018-01, 00.15.37-00.15.42)
(17) ambaka+lhangw na-m@n@ngka-dh@-n@=ma ena angalya
slowly REAL.N EUT-different-INCH-PST=SType
NEUT.this
NEUT.place
‘slowly this place seems to get different’
(JL, JRB1-007-01, 00.01.29-00.01.34 narrative)
This generalization is not unexpected, as it is in line with well-known observations
about the so-called ‘present perfective paradox’ (De Wit 2016); said paradox predicts that,
e.g., utterances describing punctual events (which normally require a past perfective or
a resultative viewpoint inflection) cannot receive a present tense marking and a present
anchoring, unless their meaning undergoes some sort of semantic shift (whether aspectual,
or aspectuo-modal); it already demonstrates that aspectual and temporal meaning can
constrain one another to some extent in Anindilyakwa.
More unexpected is Table 6, which reveals that most utterances (roughly 75%) in our
past tense sub-corpus convey atelic event predicates—with achievement event predicates
being noticeably less frequent, and non-telic change-of-state event predicates much more
frequent.
Table 6. Event structure classes in our sub-corpus of past-inflected verbs.
Event Structure Class Number of Verb Forms Percentage
States 7 6.93%
Atelic dynamic events 21 20.79%
Non-telic change-of-state events 37 36.63%
Accomplishments 6 5.94%
Achievements 30 29.70%
Total 101
This quick comparison reveals that our main zero tense corpus vs. non-zero tense
sub-corpora significantly differ in terms of event structure composition, and suggests
that the three tenses exhibit substantially different aspectual selectional preferences, or
restrictions in the case of the present (non-past)—the Anindilyakwa non-past seems to
require unbounded, cumulative predicate types, and the past seems to predominantly
involve non-telic utterances, in contrast with the Anindilyakwa zero tense.
14
This validates
the importance of the Bounded Event Constraint in this language: utterances denoting
bounded events cannot anchor to the present (or only with accomplishments in the zero
tense, as we will see), and temporally present utterances must denote unbounded events.
By itself, this sets an interesting background against which evaluating the temporal effects
of aspectual meanings with the Anindilyakwa zero tense.
Languages 2023,8, 8 22 of 39
3.2. Telicity vs. Non-Telicity and Zero Tense
Let us now turn to the study of correlations between aspectual parameters, and the
temporal interpretation (present vs. past) of zero tense in our corpus, starting with telicity.
Throughout Sections 3.1–3.4, we will systematically confront counts in all temporal contexts
(regardless of whether or not said contexts possess (or do not possess) independent overt
or covert temporal information), with counts in temporally empty contexts (i.e., they must
not offer overt/covert temporal information, besides what can be derived from aspectual
meaning), so as to identify effects of temporal anaphora on the interpretation of zero tense
(and determine which aspectual parameters have non-monotonic vs. monotonic temporal
effects on zero tense: non-monotonic temporal effects can be overridden by contextual
temporal information, whereas monotonic temporal effects cannot). Table 7below was
construed for all temporal contexts, to determine whether telicity constituted a determining
parameter for past/present temporal anchoring—i.e., how strongly does telicity correlate
with past readings, while barring present readings? It opposes telic and non-telic utterances,
with the latter denoting either cumulative (CUM) predicates (activity/stative predicates),
or non-telic change-of-state (CoS) event predicates (including through semelfactive verbs,
and inchoative readings of atelic verbs).
Table 7. Temporal anchoring of telic vs. non-telic utterances in all temporal contexts.
Event Structure Opposition Past Present Total
Telic 109 7 116
non-telic (CUM + CoS non telic) 67 20 87
Total 176 27 203
Figure 3offers a visualization (via R’s mosaicplot function) of Table 7; it makes it
obvious that (i) telic events are predominant in our zero tense sample and (ii) that telic
utterances tend to associate with past anchoring, while non-atelic utterances tend to favor
a present anchoring, but that (iii) these are not categorical correlations.
Figure 3. Vizualisation of temporal anchoring of telic vs. non-telic utterances.
Running Fischer’s exact test
15,16
on Table 7, we get p= 2.987
×
10
−09
, and an odds
ratio of 15.94346, with 95% confidence interval [5.575388; 51.268209]—the zero hypothesis
(variables are independent) must be rejected. A chi-square test
17
yields X-squared = 10.965,
df = 1, p-value = 0.0009283. Both tests lead us to conclude that telicity and temporal
anchoring are not independent variables, i.e., are significantly correlated. There is a marked
and significant, but not categorical tendency for telic verbs to pair up with a past anchoring,