Beyond Time - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley

include change-of-state verbs and perception verbs, among a few others. Situations are
atelic, denoting “positions” or “a character or quality which is attributed to the logical
subject of the state of affairs”.
In narratives, the Perfective and Simple Past have their most complex interactions with
process-type verbs. The perfective, though denoting a situation as an undifferentiated whole,
also still “bears some traces of its perfect origin” (Fleisch 2000:285) and may therefore
implicate a continued state rather than simple consecutive taxis with process verbs, which
involve not a simple action but a state change. This is not an issue with the Simple Past.
However, if used with process verbs in event chains, other (non-process) verbs in the chain
would also be marked with the Simple Past. This kind of usage does in fact occur, but
because the Simple Past also highlights scene changes, as discussed above, the consecutive,
rather than Simple Past or Perfective marking, is often preferred in event chains containing
process and other verbs (Fleisch 2000:285-286).
Seidel (2008) offers an in-depth analysis of past tenses in Yeyi narrative. The most
important of these are the Hodiernal Anterior (h-anterior) and the Prehodiernal Anterior
(p-anterior).
The Yeyi Hodiernal Anterior is marked by a null slot where the TAM marker usually
appears, a subject marker ending in -a, and final vowel harmony (FVH). Its use has developed
beyond the canonical functions of anterior aspect (i.e. a past situation with relevance at
reference time). It is a “truly relative” tense in that it can be used to express anteriority
to past, present, and future situations, including (as the most common case) the time of
utterance (Seidel 2008:298). As predicted by Bybee et al. (1994:105), the H-Anterior appears
to be grammaticalizing to a simple (hodiernal) past; in many cases “leav[ing] the question
of posterior relevance open for the context to differentiate” (Seidel 2008:298). Also, unlike
the Hodiernal Imperfective, the H-Anterior carries a clear implication of completion (Seidel
2008:298). Hodiernality overrides the expression of present relevance, so that situations that
occurred more than 24 hours prior to utterance time, even if they have a clear resultant state,
often cannot felicitously combine with the H-Anterior. Unlike the Perfective, the H-Anterior
cannot be used in consecutive taxis.
In non-narrative uses, the H-Anterior has anterior/simple past interpretations. It is
preferred to other TAs in everyday discourse, and – unlike narrative tenses – does not denote
event sequentiality in consecutive sentences, although the events may be given sequentially.
These functions also hold for quoted speech in narratives.
In hodiernal narratives, the H-Anterior is used to introduce episodes, setting the “reference
frame” as including the utterance time. After an episode has been opened by the
H-Anterior, other TAs are used, “latch[ing] on to the time frame introduced by the anterior,
and only needing to specify time as relative to it and other events (Seidel 2008:377).
In prehodiernal narratives, H-anterior forms have at least three functions:
a. “Relate background events that happened during the current episode” (Seidel 2008:375):
The H-Anterior can be used to depict an event that is temporally prior to the event most
recently presented in the narrative, (probably) relevant to the current narrative, and new
to the hearer. This function is similar to its uses in everyday non-narrative discourse.
29