Aspect, Modality, and Tense in Badiaranke by Rebecca Tamar
Aspect, Modality, and Tense in Badiaranke by Rebecca Tamar Cover A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Line Mikkelsen, Chair Professor Lev Michael Professor Alan Timberlake Spring 2010 Aspect, Modality, and Tense in Badiaranke © 2010 by Rebecca Tamar Cover 1 Abstract Aspect, Modality, and Tense in Badiaranke by Rebecca Tamar Cover Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics University of California, Berkeley Professor Line Mikkelsen, Chair Most formal analyses of the semantics of tense, aspect, and modality (TAM) have been developed on the basis of data from a small number of well-studied languages. In this dissertation, I describe and analyze the TAM system of Badiaranke, an Atlantic (Niger- Congo) language spoken in Senegal, Guinea, and Guinea-Bissau, which manifests several cross-linguistically unusual features. I develop a new semantic proposal for Badiaranke TAM that explains its distinctive properties while also building on the insights of earlier analyses of TAM in more commonly studied languages. Aspect in Badiaranke has two initially surprising features. First, the perfective is used to talk not only about past events (as expected), but also about present states (not expected). Second, the imperfective is used to talk not only about ongoing or habitually recurring eventualities (as expected), but also about future and epistemically probable eventualities, as well as in consequents of conditionals and counterfactuals (not expected). I develop a modal explanation of these patterns, relying on the distinction between settled pasts and branching futures (Dowty 1977, Kaufmann et al.
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