Beyond Time - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley

(123) àwá ndìnàláwùkà, ndàwààná òmùntù nàlyâ
awa
ndi-na-lawuk-a nda-waan-a omuntu na-li-a
cl16.loc(dem) 1sg-hod.ipfv-run-fv 1sg.cmpl-find-fv cl1.person sit-eat-fv
‘while I was running [today], I came upon a person [who was] eating’
(ZT2009Elic29)
-a- is clearly not a perfective marker in the traditional sense of depicting a situation as
an unanalyzed whole: the previous sections have demonstrated that -a- situates perspective
time only with respect to nuclear completion, and not to situation onset or a post-nuclear
coda. In general across languages, the markedness status of the imperfective vs. perfective is
unclear and varied, leading Dahl (1985:69-72) to treat them as “equipollent”, although this is
not necessarily the case within particular languages. The relationship between imperfective
and perfective in Totela, if -a- fills the role of perfective, is not a simple binary opposition. In
Totela, it seems that the distinction is not imperfective vs. perfective, but rather imperfective
vs. completive, where the completive, by virtue of marking nuclear completion, also fulfills
some typical perfective function. Further exploration of the notion of verbal “completion”
and “culmination” as a function of situation type may lead to a better understanding of the
role of forms labeled “perfective” across Bantu, as these are still poorly understood overall
(see Seidel 2009).
One analysis of a Bantu marker, labeled “perfective”, that is consonant with the temporal
interpretations of -a- in Totela is found in Botne (2010), who analyzes -ILE markers in several
northeastern Bantu languages. In Luwanga (JE.32) and Lusaamia (JE.34), the -ILE reflex
-ire may have present stative and past dynamic (change-of-state) readings, like Totela -a-,
as shown for Lusaamia in (124).
(124) en-jóóny’-ire
1sg-become.tired-pfv
a: ‘I am tired’
b: ‘I got tired’ (earlier in the day)
(Botne 2010:44, ex. 15)
Botne describes Lusaamia (and Luwanga) -ire as a perfective marker, defining perfective
as making “an assertion about a time of the event subsequent to the endpoint of the event
nucleus that serves as a reference anchor”, namely that the “nucleus . . . named by the verb
is perceived as having been realized” (Botne 2010:43). Botne accounts for the two readings
with change-of-state verbs by introducing a “point-of-view” variable π, somewhat similar
to what I call perspective time, which may be located either prior to utterance time in a
“situation centered” reading, or at utterance time in a deictic, “speaker-centered” reading.
Speaker-centered interpretations give present state readings as in (124a), while situationcentered
readings are dynamic, depicting a change of state in the past (124b). In both cases,
point-of-view π follows the situation nucleus (Botne 2010:45).
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