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On the role of person features in the evidential-temporal connection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 October 2019

Roumyana Pancheva  and
Maria Luisa Zubizarreta
Roumyana Pancheva
Affiliation:
University of Southern California
Maria Luisa Zubizarreta*
Affiliation:
University of Southern California
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

The present article argues that temporality can be computed indirectly via evidentiality, and that this is the case for Paraguayan Guaraní, a tenseless language. To model the evidential–temporal connection, we employ features from the domains of person (author, participant) and general deixis (proximate, distal). We discuss in detail the case of two evidential morphemes: indirect evidential ra'e and reportative raka'e. We argue that these particles do not have temporal semantics; rather their temporal contribution is due to the interaction of person features that determine the type of evidentiality and deictic features incorporated into the person system.

Résumé

Le présent article défend l'idée que la temporalité peut être calculée indirectement par le biais de l’évidentialité, ce qui est le cas en guaraní paraguayen, une langue sans temps grammatical. Pour modéliser la connexion temporelle–évidentielle, nous utilisons des traits tirés des domaines de la personne (auteur, participant) et de la deixis générale (proximal, distal). Nous discutons en détail du cas de deux morphèmes évidentiels : ra'e (indirect) et raka'e (reportatif). Nous soutenons que ces éléments n'ont pas de sémantique temporelle; leur contribution temporelle est plutôt due à l'interaction des traits de personne qui déterminent le genre de traits d’évidentialité et de deixis intégrés au système de personne.

Keywords

Evidentialitytemporalityperson/deictic featuresattitude contextsGuaraníÉvidentialitétemporalitétraits de personne et de déixiscontextes d'attitudeguaraní
Type
Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 64 , Issue 4 , December 2019 , pp. 673 - 708
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association/Association canadienne de linguistique 2019 

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Footnotes

The fieldwork on which this article is based was supported by a USC grant to M.L. Zubizarreta. Various versions of this work were presented at Congreso de Gramática Generativa 27 (Alcalá de Henares, Spain, 2017), VI Congreso Internacional de Estudios Linguísticos (Brasilia, 2017), The Manitoba Workshop on Person (Winnipeg, 2017), The Princeton Symposium on Syntactic Theory (Princeton, 2018), VIII Encuentro de Gramática Generativa (Buenos Aires, 2018), University of Arizona Linguistics Colloquium (Tucson, 2019), The Alphabet of Grammar Workshop (British Academy, July 2019). We thank the participants, as well as the two anonymous reviewers, and the guest editors of this issue for their help and comments. Authors are listed alphabetically; no primacy of authorship is intended.

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