Beyond Time - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley

ecause the consequences of the past decision are felt through the present and
into the future. Half an hour later, when I took his form out of context and asked
him for a translation, he interpreted it as an anterior and only reluctantly agreed
it might refer to a future event. Speakers of other languages acknowledged the
same possibility in their languages in later discussions (Nurse 2008:163).
A second possibility for explaining such examples relates to situation-type coercion. It
has been shown in 3.2.2.4 for statives of perception that “completion” may refer either to
ending of the state of perception, or to its achievement-like beginning.
Note that both (143) and (144) refer to paths of motion. It may be that the salient fact
at utterance time, and hence the situation nucleus, is that the path has been started upon;
the journey itself is a result “state” of starting. Example (143), then, might mean something
like ‘I’ve left for Kaiwala (only)’. Examples like (144), especially when they include distal
-ka-, might also mean something like ‘I have left the place where I was (far from hearer) and
am on my way (to the hearer)’. 21 Similarly, the ‘since’ examples in (141) and 142) describe
entry into an existential state.
In either solution, completion semantics, combined with pragmatic interpretations based
on discourse context, can provide a unified account of -a-’s temporal role. Thus, all of
-a-’s typical uses, as well as its special uses, may be explained under an analysis of nucleus
completion, with context contributing the necessary information to determine temporal relationships.
The assertion of completion with respect to perspective time is important in
discourse structuring; -a-’s role as a completion marker is evident in its narrative uses,
discussed in the next section.
3.3 The role of “completion” in narratives
Recall from 7.6 that in Totela narratives, the majority of verbs are not inflected for tense
or aspect, but rather occur with special narrative marking (ku- or noku-. Thus, the appearance
of TAM marking requiring inflection is not default, but rather, I argue, indicates the
intentional use by speakers for some purpose. The completion semantics proposed for -ain
the previous section make it ripe for use as a marker of information structure. This is
particularly evident in narratives, where all of the events discussed are assumed to be complete
at the time of telling. The use of completion marking, then, can indicate things like
scene completion, or completion with respect to story-time perspective (resumptive uses).
The lack of domain change with -a- is also evident in its narrative distribution.
Totela narratives typically begin and end with dissociative ka perfective or imperfective
marking, as discussed in chapter 5. These markers are rarely used within the actual narrative
body, where -a- commonly occurs. Verbs marked with -a- and -ka- make up about 20% of
non-dialogue verbs in narratives. They are by far the most common markers on verbs marked
for TAM (as opposed to uninflected “narrative” verbs, see 7.6): They make up nearly 50% of
inflected verbs. The -a- marker is more common than prehodiernal -ka- (approx. 5:1 ratio).
21 Similarly, Cover (2010:88) notes that the Badiaranke verb for ‘go (to)’ (raN-) can also mean ‘depart for’.
142