Tiempo, evidencialidad y miratividad en guaraní paraguayo y español de contacto: ra’e y había sido

Abstract

En guaraní paraguayo y otras variedades de esta lengua existe un morfema libre ra’e que presenta valores de evidencial indirecto, mirativo y pasado, aunque con frecuentes contraejemplos en los que prima facie la evidencia aparece como directa, la miratividad no se observa y el valor temporal es de presente. En sus usos evidenciales y mirativos equivale frecuentemente, en el español paraguayo, a la expresión adverbial había sido. El presente artículo se propone situar ra’e y había sido en el contexto de debates recientes sobre tiempo, aspecto, evidencialidad y miratividad, y sugerir una explicación unificada para sus diversos valores a partir de la noción de Tiempo de Adquisición de la Evidencia (Lee 2011). A partir de esto, asimismo, establecemos diferencias entre ambas expresiones y otros evidenciales semejantes en otras lenguas, incluyendo los usos evidenciales de las perífrasis haber + participio documentadas en otras variedades sudamericanas.

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

“…As discussed by Salanova and Carol (2017), Carol and Avellana (2019), and Velázquez-Castillo (2009), and corroborated by our own fieldwork, ra'e does not directly contribute to the temporality of the described event. The use of ra'e is thus compatible with a described event that occurred in a distal past (25a) or one that has not yet occurred, as in (25b) 23…”

“… In both contexts C1 and C2 considered above, there is an inference on the part of S 1 that Kalo came, based on the observation of a related event, namely, the presence of Kalo's hat on the table (a non-trivial inference) or based on the observation that Kalo is in the kitchen (a trivial inference, but an inference nonetheless). Interestingly, there is a constraint on the type of evidence that licenses ra'e with punctual events (also independently established by Carol and Avellana 2019), illustrated in (15), from our questionnaire, with the punctual verb (o)joka ‘to break’. We asked our consultants to compare two scenarios: Context 1, in which S enters the kitchen and sees a broken dish (S does not see Kalo but knows that he is the only one that has been around) and Context 2, in which S enters the kitchen and sees Kalo break the dish.…”

“…Because the semantic inference in (16a) and (16b) is subtle, the mirative reading is particularly salient (see Peterson 2015 for a pragmatic account of mirativity). For a view of ra'e close to the one presented above, see Carol and Avellana (2019), and for a different view, see Salanova and Carol (2017).…”

“…We may assume that this is the unmarked case. Yet, as noted by Salanova and Carol (2017) and Carol and Avellana (in press), the EA event can be dissociated from speech time. In particular, it can be shifted to a past time by temporal adverbials that we identified in section 2 as discourse-framing adverbs, and also in narrative contexts.…”

“…Although the meaning of surprise is quite pervasive with ra'e , it is not always present. See Salanova and Carol (2017) and Carol and Avellana (2019) for discussion of this issue with respect to ra'e .…”