Beyond Time - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley

Fleisch (2000), and Seidel (2008) demonstrate that past/perfective/anterior morphology
plays such roles in Lucazi (Bantu, K.13) and Yeyi (Bantu, R.41) narratives. While in many
ways specific to narrative, these functions are also consonant with the general meanings
and pragmatic functions of the markers, and are of use for a holistic understanding of their
development and meanings. As Seidel notes, “merely analyzing the tense aspect morphology
and [its] semantic scope in terms of single utterances or small texts would lead to a skewed
picture of the tense-aspect system” (2008:358).
In her study of the Chisukwa (Bantu, M.202) verb and its morphology, Kershner (2002:
231) notes what seems like a “Remote Past marker” -ka- that she analyzes as a marker of
the dissociative D-domain, as well as an apparent “Immediate Past” marker -aa-, which
according to Kershner, “actually marks a preceding comparable time unit with respect to
the currently understood time unit”; verbs with -aa- are in what Botne & Kershner (2008)
call the P-domain.
In Chisukwa narratives, -ka- occurs when the narrative depicts an event that is “subjectively
distant” or “temporally remote”: examples include “fictional stories” and “personal
histories” (Kershner 2002:232). In these narratives, -ka- marks storyline events, and when
-aa- (and another P-domain marker, -ku-) occur, they give background information. In
contrast, narratives about “current events or economic activities [depicted] as subjectively
near”, -ku- is used for storyline events giving new information; -aa- is still used for background
information (Kershner 2002:232). The behavior of the -ka- and -aa- markers in
narratives leads Kershner to conclude that
Although traditional studies have assumed that tense can best be represented
linearly on a timeline, the evidence from narratives has shown that the organization
and semantics of these morphemes is more complex and that they are only
superficially tense-like in behavior (Kershner 2002:232, emphasis added).
Fleisch (2000) notes that in Lucazi narratives, the use of the Simple Past (-à-. . . - ÌLe)
typically occurs at scene changes, when there is a “change in the set, either a character
coming or going, different location, [or] different time” (Fleisch 2000:286). However, this
scene-changing function is also apparently a matter of style. Narratives may also be told
using mostly the Consecutive form (-àkà. . . -à) or the perfective (-à. . . -à), but these are
often considered more “clumsy”; with the exclusive use of the Consecutive is even less “literary”
than the Perfective (Fleisch 2000:263). Respectively substituting the Perfective and
Consecutive for the Simple Past in a sample narrative of consecutive actions resulted in
consultant comments that the new texts were “acceptable but bad in style, or sounding as
if the text was taken from everyday language (often [hinting also] that the events seemed to
have happened in a more recent past)“ (Fleisch 2000:264).
The use of the simple past and perfective in Lucazi narrative is also constrained by
situation type. Fleisch divides verbs into three main lexical classes: actions, processes, and
situations. Actions are “dynamic events . . . which are controlled by their logical subjects”
(Fleisch 2000:228). Processes, on the other hand, “do not assign the agent role to their
subject”: they cannot answer the question ‘what did X do?’ (Fleisch 2000:235). These
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