TAM Coding and Temporal Interpretation in West African Languages

Anne Mucha and Malte Zimmermann

1 Introduction

This chapter discusses the temporal interpretation and the grammatical coding of tense, aspect, and modality (TAM) in two West African languages Hausa (Chadic, Afro-Asiatic) and Medumba (Grassfield Bantu, Niger-Congo). We chose these two languages because their tense-marking systems are radically different. As demonstrated in Mucha (2012, 2013), Hausa belongs to the typological class of tenseless languages, in which tense is not grammatically marked and temporal interpretation is pragmatically resolved, relying on aspectual and contextual cues. By contrast, Medumba belongs to the typological class of graded-tense languages (Comrie 1985; Cable 2013), which are able to express more fine-grained distinctions in past- and future-oriented interpretations, such as recent past or remote past. As a result, temporal interpretation in Medumba is expected to rely less on aspectual and contextual cues. Despite this striking difference in tense coding, we will show that the two languages are surprisingly similar in other respects. First, both languages have clearly identifiable linguistic categories of aspect and modality, which shows that the presence of these categories in a language is in dependent of the presence or absence of the category of tense. Second, both languages express future-oriented readings with a modal element, showing that there is no future tense in these languages and, perhaps, cross-linguistically (Enç 1996; Matthewson 2006; Copley 2009). Third, both languages rely on aspectual and contextual cues for temporal interpretation, providing support for the analysis of tense as a deictic category, relating the reference time (RT) to the utterance time (UT).

The chapter is structured as follows. In the remainder of the introduction, we lay out the background assumptions concerning the semantic concepts under lying tense, aspect, and modality, as well as the notion of linguistic categories in natural language. We also identify a number of problems that are often encountered in semantic field research on TAM categories. Section 2 presents our analysis of Hausa as a tenseless language, which follows the more detailed account by Mucha (2013). The central claims are that Hausa does not have a linguistic category of tense, such that temporal interpretation is determined by the interaction of Aktionsart, aspect, and context, and that the so-called future marker is in fact a modal marker. Section 3 presents the first ever sketch of a formal-semantic analysis of tense-aspect marking in Medumba, comparing it with another graded-tense language, Gikuyu, as discussed by Cable (2013). We propose that some of the temporal markers in Medumba are indeed tense markers. In addition, Medumba has two sets of aspectual markers located in different structural positions. From a theoretical point of view this means that what is perceived as a unified typological class of graded-tense languages splits up into various subclasses that make use of different formal means for expressing temporal information. In addition to tense, Medumba has two aspectual categories, and, as in Hausa, future-oriented readings are expressed by means of a modal marker. Section 4 concludes.

1.1 Semantic Concepts Under lying Tense, Aspect, and Modality

We adopt the following definitions for the semantic concepts underlying the notions of tense, aspect, and modality, respectively. Following Reichenbach (1947) and Klein (1994), tense markers express the temporal relation between the utterance time (UT) and the reference time (RT) relative to which the proposition expressed is evaluated. There are three basic relations between UT and RT (Comrie 1985): simultaneity (UT = RT, or UT [not subset] RT) for present time reference, anteriority (RT < UT) for past time reference, and posteriority (UT < RT) for future time reference. As for grammatical coding, we follow Partee (1973) and Kratzer (1998) in treating tense as introducing a variable expression ti in T. This indexed tense variable gets a value g(i) by means of a contextual assignment, where g(i) corresponds to RT. Possible value assignment to ti in a given context is restricted by tense specifications. The tense specification adjoins to ti and denotes a partial identity function giving back a value if and only if g(i) stands in the relevant relation to UT as illustrated for the past tense in (1) (see Heim 1994):

(1) T

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ti PAST ?:t < UT. t

Aspect refers to the temporal relation between RT and the event time (ET), which is the time at which the described event takes place (Klein 1994). The temporal relations involved are subset ([not subset]) or precedence relations (<). Basic aspects frequently found in natural languages are imperfective/progressive (RT [subset] ET), perfective (ET > RT), perfect (ET < RT), and prospective (RT < ET) aspect (Kratzer 1998; Cable 2013). Syntactically, aspectual heads are located in a position above vP. Semantically, aspect maps an event property of type onto a property of times (), as illustrated for progressive and perfective aspect.

(2) a. [[PROG]] = ?P<1.st>.?t.?w.[there exists]e [P(e)(w)& t [not subset] time(e)]

b. [[PFV]] = ?P<1.st>.?t.?w.[there exists]e [P(e)(w)& time(e) [not subset] t]

The semantic concept of modality is frequently subdivided into the classes of epistemic modality and root modality (Hoffmann 1966; Hacquard 2009; Kratzer 2012a). Epistemic modality includes evidential interpretations, and root modality subsumes all deontic, bouletic, and inertial interpretations. In addition, some scholars assume a metaphysical modality, which they argue shows up...