Beyond Time - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley

all require a virtual, fictive reading. This may take the form of a virtual schedule (futurate);
a “replay” (Langacker 2001:269) or other evocation of a past occurrence (historical pasts,
descriptions of pictures); or “virtual instances of the process types in question, conjured up
to express generalizations about the world’s structure” (habituals, generics, and expressions
of “timeless truth”) (Langacker 2001:270).
Klein (1994) does not discuss futurate readings of the English Simple Present and Present
Progressive.
In Totela, -la- and -Ø- forms also have both present and futurate readings in default
contexts. These readings are discussed and analyzed in 4.3.2. However, the Totela forms
differ from English in several important ways. First, there is no other dedicated hodiernal
future form in Zambian Totela. 5 It may therefore be expected that -la- and -Ø- cover
both meanings. Second, contrasting with English (in (175b) and (176)), there is no clear
scheduling or certain knowledge requirement for futurate readings with -la- in Totela, as in
(177).
(176) #Do you think it rains/it’s raining (later on)?
(177) a. ulanahana okuti ilasoka?
u-la-nahan-a
okuti i-la-sok-a?
2sg-noncmpl-think-fv that cl9-noncmpl-rain-fv
‘do you think it’s going to rain?’ (ZT2006Elic55)
b. imvula ilasoka
imvula i-la-soka
cl9.rain cl9-noncmpl-rain-fv
‘it’s going to rain’ (ZT2006Elic55)
These facts would seem to point to a non-past analysis of -la- and -Ø-. However, the
Totela forms stand in contrast not to a past form, but, I argue, to -a-, analyzed in the
previous chapter as a marker of nuclear completion. -la- and -Ø- indicate non-completion
of a situation nucleus, which is equivalent to the end of the event in non-change-of-state
verbs, and to the point of “complete” state change in change-of-state verbs. As presents in
other languages also show significant interactions with both aspect and situation type, the
privileged status of nuclear completion may be related to the importance of the change-ofstate
vs. durative distinction in Totela and many other Bantu languages. Cross-linguistic
interactions of the present with aspect and situation type are discussed in the next section.
First, though, before leaving the interactions of tense and the “present”, the possibility
of past time readings should also be noted. These are problematic for both true present and
non-past analyses, neither of which predicts past readings. According to Binnick (1991),
past readings of (e.g.) the English Present (e.g. historical present) are made by shifting, via
5 In Namibian Totela, there is a subjunctive hodiernal future form, although the regular, unmarked present
form may also be used for hodiernal futures. The posthodiernal future in Namibian Totela is also obligatorily
subjunctive, unlike in Zambian Totela.
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