On nominal tense

Nordlinger & Sadler’s (2004. Nominal tense in crosslinguistic perspective. Language 80. 776–806) seminal work fostered an intense debate on the semantics of nominal tense systems, with the side effect of widening the typological coverage of this grammatical feature. This paper aims at contributing to the ongoing debate. In contrast with work by Tonhauser, who excluded ‘tense’ as a semantic component of the Paraguayan Guaraní nominal tense system, the paper claims that all TAM dimensions are involved – temporality, aspect, modality – with different proportions in the individual markers. Most importantly, it claims that nominal tense does not presuppose a semantics of its own, other than the one needed for verbal tenses. Moreover, the paper presents evidence that the semantic component of aspect, besides being necessarily activated in any nominal tense marker, is also directly conveyed by some of them, which can legitimately be called ‘nominal aspect’ markers. This integrates Nordlinger & Sadler’s (2004) survey, in which aspect was notably absent. In addition, the paper points out possible cases of nominal actionality (a.k.a. Aktionsart). Finally, the paper suggests that the pervasive presence of aspect (and also, but rarely, actionality) among nominal tense markers finds interesting parallels in some types of deverbal nominalizations, although these belong in another grammatical drawer.

Language Contact in Paraguayan Guaraniˊ

Paraguayan Guarani (PG) is a Tupian language spoken as an official language along with Spanish in Paraguay and with non-official status in Brazil and Argentina. While Paraguay shows unusual percentages of societal bilingualism compared to other Latin American countries, PG is in a diglossic relation to Spanish, with the latter language being the prestigious one in every case. PG differs from contemporary indigenous Guarani varieties and historical Jesuitical Guarani regarding the presence of Spanish in its lexicon and grammar. The century-long contact with Spanish influenced Guarani at phonological, morphosyntactic and lexical levels. PG should not be viewed as a monolithic mixed language, not only because it is comprised of a series of mixed lects that may or may not evolve in the direction of a bilingual mixed language, but also because the level and type of mixing of PG mixed lects are not characteristic of bilingual mixed languages to the extent that they do not show the genealogical lexicon-grammar split. Historically, PG has become a discursive strategy for the creation and negotiation of cross-linguistic and cross-cultural identities in Paraguay.

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

The present article argues that temporality can be computed indirectly via evidentiality, and that this is the case for Paraguayan Guaraní, a tenseless language. To model the evidential–temporal connection, we employ features from the domains of person (author, participant) and general deixis (proximate, distal). We discuss in detail the case of two evidential morphemes: indirect evidential ra'e and reportative raka'e. We argue that these particles do not have temporal semantics; rather their temporal contribution is due to the interaction of person features that determine the type of evidentiality and deictic features incorporated into the person system.