Paradigm-induced implicatures of TAM markers: The case of the Daakaka distal

• Main Author: von Prince, Kilu
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Sinn und Bedeutung 2019
• Subjects: tlingit
• Online Access: https://ojs.ub.uni-konstanz.de/sub/index.php/sub/article/view/178

The distal TAM-marker in the Oceanic language Daakaka (Vanuatu) refers to events in the actual past as well as the counterfactual past, present and future. It comes with a cessation interpretation similar to English simple past statives and similar to markers of (discontinuous) past in other languages. For English and Tlingit, it has been argued that this cessation interpretation is a pragmatic implicature rather than part of the lexical semantics. I will argue that in Daakaka, too, the cessation interpretation is the result of an implicature, but that this can only be understood if the modal dimensions of the TAM markers are taken into consideration.