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Irrealis Is Real 1 Introduction Irrealis is real 1 Abstract 2 The question whether irrealis is a meaningful concept in cross-linguistic comparison has been 3 the subject of longstanding controversy. In this paper, we will argue that the semantic domain 4 of irreality is split into two domains—the possible and the counterfactual—and that an “irrealis” 5 marker in a given language may refer to only one of these domains or to both. A significant part 6 of the cross-linguistic variation in what is referred to by the term irrealis can be traced back to this 7 distinction. Other factors which obscure the realis/irrealis divide include functional subdivisions 8 of the irrealis domain and paradigmatic competition within the TAM system of a language. We 9 conclude that irrealis is a cross-linguistically meaningful notion. 10 1 Introduction 11 1.1 Overview 12 Many languages have been described as systematically distinguishing between utterances relating 13 to actual events, and utterances referring to future, hypothetical or counterfactual scenarios. This 14 phenomenon is usually characterized as a distinction between realis and irrealis mood. This is 15 illustrated by the following examples from Nanti (Arawak) (Michael, 2014: 254): 16 (1) a. O=pok-;-i maika 3.nonm.sbj=come-ipfv-real.i now 17 “She is coming now.” 18 b. o=N-pok-;-e kamani 3.nonm.sbj=irr-come-ipfv-irr.i tomorrow 19 “She will come tomorrow.”¹ 20 However, this practice has been dismissed for cross-linguistic research by some. The main points 21 of criticism boil down to the following arguments: 22 1. The notion of irrealis is conceptually unappealing. 23 2. Few languages have a binary distinction between realis and irrealis mood. Compare Bybee 24 (1998: 265): 25 For any given language, there are several grams that mark off portions of the con- 26 ceptual space for situations that are not asserted to exist, or if there is a highly 27 generalized gram, it does not cover all “irrealis” situations […] 28 3. The functions of markers that have been labeled as irrealis are too inconsistent cross-linguistically 29 to constitute a useful category. We will discuss this argument in detail in section 4. ¹agr – agreement; ag – agentive; al – alienable; aux – auxiliary; ben – benefactive; cf – counterfactual; cl(1/2/3) – possessive classifier (class); comp – complementizer; cond – conditional; ctf – counterfactual; dem – demonstrative; dist – distal (TAM); dl – dual; du – dual; excl – exclusive; fut – future; habit – habitual; impf – imperfective; im – imminent; incl – inclusive; ipfv – imperfective; ipf – imperfective; irr – irrealis; i – i-class verb; neg1 – negation one (in Nafsan); neg2 – negation two; neg – negation; nim – non-imminent; nonm – non-masculine; nonsg – non-singular; pc – paucal; pl – plural; poss – possessive; pot – potential; prf – perfect; psp – prospective; real – realis; redup – reduplication; rel – relative clause complementizer; res – resultative; sbj – subject; sg – singular; ss – same subject/reference marker (Watahomigie et al. , 1982); sub – subordinator; tent – tentative; tma – tense, aspect, mood; trans – transitive; v – epenthetic vowel; 1 30 We believe that these points do not undermine the validity of the concept of irrealis. Instead, we 31 will argue that they can largely be resolved by a better theoretical understanding of the concept 32 and by more systematic typological and descriptive research. In particular, we will discuss the 33 following factors as responsible for a substantial portion of inconsistencies in how irrealis has 34 been described: 35 1. The two terms “realis” and “irrealis” can be given conceptually meaningful content, but the 36 lack of a theoretical basis has so far prevented this (section 2). 37 2. There is a binary distinction between realis and irrealis, but both are further divided into 38 temporal-modal and functional subdomains. Languages differ in how they carve up this 39 semantic space (section 3). 40 3. Mismatches between language-specific descriptions can be caused by the following factors: 41 (a) In some languages, markers that only refer to a sub-domain of irrealis are labeled as 42 irrealis. 43 (b) It is often assumed that realis, in particular, is expressed by a zero-morpheme orbya 44 portmanteau morpheme, but in some cases, the corresponding expression will simply 45 not encode any specific temporal-modal reference at all. This explains why forms that 46 are thought to encode realis may show up in non-realis contexts. 47 (c) Certain functions typically associated with irrealis may be encoded by more specific 48 markers in some languages and block the use of irrealis, such as specialized imperative, 49 prohibitive or timitive expressions. 50 These factors are discussed in section 4. 51 1.2 Historical background 52 The opposition between realis and irrealis moods has been observed early, and in a wide variety 53 from languages, especially from Oceania and the Americas. Possibly the first instance of the term 54 irrealis comes from Sapir’s description of Southern Paiute (Sapir, 1930: 168), where he states about 55 a particular suffix: 56 This element indicates that the activity expressed by the verb is unreal, i. e.either 57 merely potential or contrary to fact (potential in past time). 58 Already in this short quote, there are two very important elements present that we will high- 59 light throughout this paper: 1) The subdivision of irreality into the potential and the counterfactual 60 and 2) the connection between these modal domains and time. 61 Another early reference to the irrealis distinction comes from Dempwolff (1939), who uses the 62 terms modus realis and modus imaginativus—the latter has been translated as irrealis in Dempwolff 63 et al. (2005): The Oceanic language Yabem (or Jabêm) of Papua New Guinea has a paradigm ofverb 64 inflections that simultaneously encode person-number features of the subject, and a distinction 65 between realis mood, pertaining to assertions of the past and present, and irrealis mood, pertaining 66 to directives, assertions about the future and epistemic possibilities. We will see that this exact 67 situation is very widespread among Oceanic languages. 68 Capell (1971) acknowledges the irrealis distinction as an important feature of at least some 69 Austronesian languages of Papua New Guinea: 70 A further feature of [Austronesian languages of New Guinea with VO order] worthy 71 of attention is the general presence of a Realis- Irrealis distinction in the verbal system, 72 i. e. a basic distinction between actions which are regarded as actually occurring and 73 actions which are merely thought about. (Capell, 1971: 288) 2 74 In subsequent years, the term irrealis is also mentioned in Bickerton (1975), Johnston (1980), 75 Dixon (1980), Givón (1982), Chung & Timberlake (1985), Foley (1986) and Blewett, S.C. (1991) (also 76 see references in Mithun 1995). Before the 1990s, however, the irrealis distinction was primarily 77 used descriptively, with respect to individual, language-specific phenomena, and without a discus- 78 sion of its theoretical status in semantics, cognition, or typology. More systematic treatments only 79 emerged in the 1990s, starting with Roberts (1990) and Bugenhagen (1993), which we will discuss 80 in more detail in the following sections. 81 Around the same time, Trask (1993: 147) comes to the following assessment: 82 [Irrealis:] A label often applied in a somewhat ad hoc manner to some distinctive gram- 83 matical form, most often a verbal inflection, occurring in some particular language and 84 having some kind of connection with unreality. Palmer (1986) recommends that this 85 term should be avoided in linguistic theory on the ground that it corresponds to no 86 consistent linguistic content. 87 Bybee et al. (1994) and Bybee (1998) expand on this criticism of the category, culminating in the 88 three main objections listed in the introduction. In the context of the publications of Bybee et al. 89 (1994) and Bybee (1998), there were a number of language-specific and more general descriptions 90 that on the one hand defended the use of the label irrealis for the purposes of language-specific 91 description, but, on the other hand, presented linguistic data that sometimes appeared to confirm 92 the concerns of Bybee and others. Thus, Givón (1994) tries to relate irreality to the better-known 93 categories of epistemic and deontic modality, through data from Romance and Bantu languages, 94 even though neither have been described as basing their TAM systems around the realis/irrealis 95 distinction. 96 In 1995, Joan Bybee and Suzanne Fleischman edited a book on modality (Bybee & Fleischman, 97 1995), which includes discussions of irrealis by Chafe (1995) and Mithun (1995). Both contributions 98 come to the conclusion that, while there is considerable cross-linguistic variation in how irrealis 99 markers are distributed, there also appears to be a common, relatively stable core of functions 100 associated with this category. 101 In the same special edition Anthropological Linguistics that features Bybee (1998), there are also 102 descriptions by Kinkade (1998) on Upper Chehalis (Salish), Callaghan (1998) on Lake Miwok (Yok- 103 Utian) and Martin (1998) on Mocho (Mayan). It is not clear to us what prompted the selection 104 of these particular languages, since they had never been argued to systematically encode the re- 105 alis/irrealis distinction. It is therefore not surprising that a picture of bewildering inconsistency 106 emerges from comparing the different accounts, which Bybee (1998) takes as evidence that the 107 irrealis is not a typologically meaningful concept. Several later accounts tend to agree with this 108 assessment, including de Haan (2012) and Cristofaro (2012). 109 This criticism notwithstanding, researchers working on individual languages or groups oflan- 110 guages have maintained that the realis/irrealis distinction is a meaningful one, many of which 111 come from the context of Oceanic. These studies include Elliott (2000); Verstraete (2005); McGre- 112 gor & Wagner (2006); Van Gijn & Gipper (2009); Barbour (2011); Exter (2012); Cleary-Kemp (2014); 113 Michael (2014); Lichtenberk (2016).
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