On the expression of TAM on nouns: Evidence from Tundra Nenets

Abstract This paper reports on a corpus study of two ditransitive constructions in Enets (Uralic, Samoyedic): the standard ditransitive construction and the so-called Destinative construction involving a specific destinative nominal morpheme. We suggest that the mutual distribution of the two competing constructions depends on referential properties of theme and information structure of the clause. The Destinative construction is used when a theme is indefinite, the standard ditransitive construction is used when a theme is definite. Most often, definiteness of a theme is also accompanied by specificity of a recipient; the combination of an indefinite theme and a non-specific recipient has not been attested at all. There is also a small number of cases when the standard ditransitive construction is used in clauses with an indefinite theme: in all such cases recipients are non-standard from the information structure point of view, they are either topical, emphatic, or extraposed. We suggest that both contexts of usage of the standard ditransitive construction can be explained if we describe its main discourse function as highlighting the known referents in discourse, be it definite themes or topical, emphatic, or extraposed recipients. The main discourse function of the destinative construction is then introducing new referents in the theme position.

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Beyond nominal tense

Aikhenvald

2021

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Tariana, an Arawak language from Brazil, has nominal markers which convey temporal and aspectual information about the noun phrase. Besides nominal future, there is a distinction between completed and non-completed nominal pasts. The completed nominal past has three meanings – decessive (‘late, gone’), temporal (‘former’), and commiserative or deprecatory (‘poor thing’). The latter is only applicable to humans and higher animates. The non-completed nominal past has a further semantic component of relevance of the state or property for the present time. The usage of the markers is governed by the principle of communicative necessity – in contrast to clausal, or propositional, tense-cum-evidentiality markers which are always obligatory. Having special means for expressing tense, aspect and relevance within a noun phrase – distinct from tense and aspect categories with clausal scope – constitutes a typologically rare feature of the language.

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On the expression of TAM on nouns: Evidence from Tundra Nenets

Cited by 5 publications

References 42 publications

Implicative Relations in Word-based Morphological Systems

Implicative Relations in Word-based Morphological Systems

Competing ditransitive constructions in Enets

Beyond nominal tense

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