TIME REFERENCE ACROSS LANGUAGES LOT summer school, Tilburg, June 19-30, 2000 Jürgen Bohnemeyer, MPI Nijmegen http://www.mpi.nl/world/persons/profession/bohnem.html mailto [email protected] DAY 4: FUTURE TIME REFERENCE AND MODALITY ! introducing the basic problem: modal attitudes of future time reference (English, Spanish) ! theoretical issues: intentions, schedules, possible worlds, branching futures ! the role of obligatoriness (English, German) ! modal commitment, non-assertive modality, irrealis (Spanish, Yukatek) ! future time reference and the realis-irrealis distinction (Burmese, Caddo, Dani, Ewe, West- Greenlandic, Wichita); ! a true future-non-future system (Hua); ! modality running the show of time reference: Turkish ! interactions of future time reference, modality, and aspect (Greek, Russian, Yukatek) Readings: Comrie (1985: 43-55); Dahl (1985: 103-112); Optional & advanced: Bohnemeyer (1998a: 313-330, 366-398); Bybee, Perkins, & Pagliuca (1994: ch. 6-7); Chafe (1995); Chung & Timberlake (1985: 241-255); Fleischman (1982: ch. 4, 6); Mithun (1995) PUZZLES FOR STARTERS (1) According to traditional reference grammars, the construction werden + infinitive is “the GER future tense” of German. The utterances below refer to future events, yet the verbs are inflected for “present” tense. How can this apparent clash of data and traditional analysis be reconciled? a. Wenn du diesen Pilz (jetzt) ißt, bist du morgen mittag tot. if youthis mushroomnow eat(PRS) are(PRS) youtomorrow noon dead ‘If you eat this mushroom (now), you will be dead (by tomorrow noon).’ b. Nächstes Jahr schreibe ich ein Buch über Semantik. next year write(PRS) I a book on semantics ‘Next year, I’ll write a book on semantics.’ c. Laut Fahrplan fährt der Zug um zehn. according to the schedule leaves(PRS) the train at ten ‘According to the schedule, the train leaves at ten.’ Time reference across languages d. Ich nehme dich mit nach Glasgow. I take(PRS) youalong to Glasgow ‘I’ll give you a lift to Glasgow.’ (2) The so-called future tense of Spanish also occurs with present-time reference. How so? SPA And what does this imply for the future-tense analysis? Estará con sus amigos. (s)he be(FUT) with his/her friends ‘He will be with his friends (e.g. tomorrow) / he would/must be with his friends (i.e. now).’ (Matte Bon 1992a: 37) (3) In Yukatek, the terminative aspect marker (a), which roughly has a perfect meaning, and the imperfective aspect marker (b) (and all other aspect marker except for the perfective) may occur with future time reference in main clauses. In contrast, the perfective aspect marker cannot have future time reference in main clauses, but it may occur with future time reference in subordinate clauses, such as in the conditional protasis in (a). How can this distribution be explained? And does the perfective aspect marker t- in fact mark past tense? YUK a. Le káa t-uy a’l-ah u ts’o’k-s-ik [DEF káa PRV-A.3 say-CMP(B.3.SG) A.3 end-CAUS-INC(B.3.SG) le ba’x k-u bèet-ik-e’, ts’o’k in kim-il. DEF what IMPF-A.3 do-INC(B.3.SG)]-TOP TERM A.1.SG die-INC ‘By the time (lit. (when) it says that) he finishes what he is doing, I shall be dead.’ (Andrade 1955: 118) b. Wáah t-in kax-t-ah hun-p’éel-e’ ALT PRV-A.1.SG find-APP-CMP(B.3.SG) one-CL.IN-TOP k-in tàas-ik tèech. IMPF-A.1.SG come:CAUS-INC(B.3.SG) you ‘If I find one, I will bring it to you.’ (Andrade 1955: 113) (4) In West-Greenlandic, a verb form not marked for modality or aspect can have present or past time reference, but not future time reference. For future time reference, a variety of modal markers may be used, including the suffix -ssa. With future time reference, -ssa may express an obligation (a), but also a prediction (b). But -ssa may also occur with past time refence, e.g. in habitual Page 2 of 38 Day 4: future time reference and modality (c) or counterfactual contexts. How can this distribution be explained? And does -ssa express future tense? a. Inna-jaa-ssa-atit. GRE go.to.bed-early-OBL-2.SG.IND ‘You must/shall go to bed early.’ (Fortescue 1984: 292) b. Tuqu-ssa-atit. die-OBL-2.SG.IND ‘You will die (i.e. if you drink the poison).’ (Fortescue 1984: 274) c. Mulu-guni mulu-guni tiki-ssa-aq atisa-i stay.away-SS.COND stay.away-SS.COND come-OBL-3.SG.INDclothes-PL.3.SG.POSS ataniiruti-vis-sima-llutik. be.without.connection-really-PERF-SS.CONT ‘(After) staying away for ages he would arrive home, his clothes all falling apart.’ (Fortescue 1984: 281) (5) In Russian, the simple ‘present tense’ form of perfective verbs has future time reference, never present time reference. Conversely, the ‘present tense’ form of imperfective verbs can only have present time reference. For future time reference, the infinitive of the imperfective verb is combined with the auxiliary bud- (which in turn is incompatible with perfective verbs). What’s going on here? And what is the tense meaning of the so-called ‘present tense’ of Russian? RUS Búdu itát’ stat’jú, nadéjus’, to pro- itáju. FUT I read(IMPF) article(ACC) I hope COMP TERM-I read(PRV) ‘I shall read/be reading the article and hope I shall get it finished.’ (Wade 1992: 298) INTRODUCING THE BASIC PROBLEM: MODAL ATTITUDES OF FUTURE TIME REFERENCE ! The fundamental problem • Whenever somebody refers to an event in the future, some kind of modal attitude is involved. • This is not even a fact of language - it’s a fact of cognition: future events are not facts! We can’t have knowledge about them in the same way that we can have knowledge about present events (through perception) and past events (through memory or through Page 3 of 38 Time reference across languages somebody else’s report).1 • Because of this difference in mental attitude, we also tend to interpret statements about the future different from statements about the past: (6) a. (How has the wheather been here lately? -) It rained yesterday. b. (I’m planning to go on a hiking trip. I wonder what the weather will be like. -) It will / is going to / rain tomorrow. • For example, we tend to interpret (6, 8, 31, 32, 33a) as a claim about a fact, and will assume that the speaker has probably experienced the event himself or herself. (S)he might also have obtained the information from somebody else. Or perhaps, the statement is purely inferential, in which case we might be annoyed, on finding out later, that it wasn’t marked that way (I think/believe/guess it probably/perhaps rained yesterday). Or the speaker is simply making it up. Depending on which of these we assume to be the case, we will react in different ways if we receive evidence later on that the statement was false. • But (6, 8, 31, 32, 33b) is a different story altogether. We understand the statement to be a prediction. We will assume that the speaker has evidence for this prediction; for example, that (s)he heard it on the weather forecast, or that (s)he has lived in this place for 30 years and knows about the significance of a particular type of clouds and wind coming from a particular direction. Whichever, we won’t be able to evaluate the statement further until the time it was asserted for has passed by. If by then the predicted event hasn’t occurred, we still don’t necessarily assume the speaker to have lied to us. Instead, we will ask the question whether the evidence the speaker had based the prediction on was sufficient to support it. If we find out that the speaker had insufficient evidence to claim (6, 8, 31, 32, 33b), we might be annoyed. And if it turns out that the speaker had in fact evidence contradicting the prediction, then we will indeed consider him or her a liar. • Properly speaking, both reference to future events and reference to present or past events involves modal attitudes of some sort. Whenever somebody asserts a proposition, a modal attitude is involved. But our cognitive system has a bias towards facts - we tend to strongly separate propositions we consider facts from those we 1 However, there are also important cases in which our attitude towards certain past events may be rather similar if not identical to our attitude towards future events, because more canonical forms of evidence for the reality of these events is lacking: conjectures and dreams are possible cases in point (but whether those are indeed treated as insufficiently supported by evidence is a culture-specific question!). Page 4 of 38 Day 4: future time reference and modality don’t.2 • So all Future Time Reference (FTR) is invariably accompanied by a non-factual modal attitude. This has led many people to think that future tenses a priori don’t exist - whatever operators are used for FTR must be modal operators, they argue. • This is a non-sequitur, rooted in a confusion of semantics with cognition. Just because an operator is used under the understanding of a non-factual modal attitude doesn’t mean that it expresses that attitude. • There is no theoretical reason why there shouldn’t be an ideal future tense which is used in any kind of FTR, irrespective of the particular modal attitude. Let us take stock of some of the attitudes towards different kinds of propositions involving FTR: (7) a.