Describing future eventualities in Tlingit: The storyboards Hawaii Trip and Imagining the Future
This paper details two storyboards —"Hawaii Trip" and "Imagining the Future"—which are designed to help investigate the way a given language does (or does not) mark predicates describing eventualities that take place in the future. I describe two studies employing these storyboar...
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University of British Columbia, Department of Linguistics, Vancouver, BC, Canada
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ftubcjournals:oai:ojs.library.ubc.ca:article/191725 2023-05-15T18:33:19+02:00 Describing future eventualities in Tlingit: The storyboards Hawaii Trip and Imagining the Future Cable, Seth 2019-06-10 application/pdf http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/storyboards/article/view/191725 https://doi.org/10.14288/sfm.v1i2.191725 eng eng University of British Columbia, Department of Linguistics, Vancouver, BC, Canada http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/storyboards/article/view/191725/188740 http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/storyboards/article/view/191725 doi:10.14288/sfm.v1i2.191725 Copyright (c) 2019 Seth Cable Semantic Fieldwork Methods; Vol. 1 No. 2 (2019): Cable, Seth: Describing future eventualities in Tlingit; 1-35 2562-9271 10.14288/sfm.v1i2 info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion Peer-reviewed Article 2019 ftubcjournals https://doi.org/10.14288/sfm.v1i2.191725 https://doi.org/10.14288/sfm.v1i2 2023-01-04T07:50:42Z This paper details two storyboards —"Hawaii Trip" and "Imagining the Future"—which are designed to help investigate the way a given language does (or does not) mark predicates describing eventualities that take place in the future. I describe two studies employing these storyboards with a speaker of the Tlingit language (Na-Dene; Alaska, British Columbia, Yukon). In prior literature, it has been claimed that a verb in Tlingit does not require special future tense marking in order to describe a future eventuality (Leer 1991). However, it has proven difficult to confirm such uses of non-future-marked verbs in regular elicitation sessions with native speakers. Through use of these two storyboards with a gifted Tlingit story-teller, it was found that some narrators do indeed use non-future-marked verbs to describe eventualities that are understood to take place in the future. However, various contextual clues—including metalinguistic comments made by the narrator himself—-suggest that such usage may reflect a special narrative or rhetorical device, akin to 'narrative present' in English. Consequently, it appears that the regular grammar of the language does require future tense marking when describing future eventualities, but artful narrators can in the course of the narrative 'shift' the temporal perspective of the narration to the future time in question, presenting those future events as on-going. While much more work must be done to rigorously test this hypothesis, these case studies nicely illustrate the use and utility of these fieldwork instruments. Article in Journal/Newspaper tlingit Alaska Yukon Open Access Journal Hosting (University of British Columbia) Yukon |
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Open Access Journal Hosting (University of British Columbia) |
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English |
description |
This paper details two storyboards —"Hawaii Trip" and "Imagining the Future"—which are designed to help investigate the way a given language does (or does not) mark predicates describing eventualities that take place in the future. I describe two studies employing these storyboards with a speaker of the Tlingit language (Na-Dene; Alaska, British Columbia, Yukon). In prior literature, it has been claimed that a verb in Tlingit does not require special future tense marking in order to describe a future eventuality (Leer 1991). However, it has proven difficult to confirm such uses of non-future-marked verbs in regular elicitation sessions with native speakers. Through use of these two storyboards with a gifted Tlingit story-teller, it was found that some narrators do indeed use non-future-marked verbs to describe eventualities that are understood to take place in the future. However, various contextual clues—including metalinguistic comments made by the narrator himself—-suggest that such usage may reflect a special narrative or rhetorical device, akin to 'narrative present' in English. Consequently, it appears that the regular grammar of the language does require future tense marking when describing future eventualities, but artful narrators can in the course of the narrative 'shift' the temporal perspective of the narration to the future time in question, presenting those future events as on-going. While much more work must be done to rigorously test this hypothesis, these case studies nicely illustrate the use and utility of these fieldwork instruments. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Cable, Seth |
spellingShingle |
Cable, Seth Describing future eventualities in Tlingit: The storyboards Hawaii Trip and Imagining the Future |
author_facet |
Cable, Seth |
author_sort |
Cable, Seth |
title |
Describing future eventualities in Tlingit: The storyboards Hawaii Trip and Imagining the Future |
title_short |
Describing future eventualities in Tlingit: The storyboards Hawaii Trip and Imagining the Future |
title_full |
Describing future eventualities in Tlingit: The storyboards Hawaii Trip and Imagining the Future |
title_fullStr |
Describing future eventualities in Tlingit: The storyboards Hawaii Trip and Imagining the Future |
title_full_unstemmed |
Describing future eventualities in Tlingit: The storyboards Hawaii Trip and Imagining the Future |
title_sort |
describing future eventualities in tlingit: the storyboards hawaii trip and imagining the future |
publisher |
University of British Columbia, Department of Linguistics, Vancouver, BC, Canada |
publishDate |
2019 |
url |
http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/storyboards/article/view/191725 https://doi.org/10.14288/sfm.v1i2.191725 |
geographic |
Yukon |
geographic_facet |
Yukon |
genre |
tlingit Alaska Yukon |
genre_facet |
tlingit Alaska Yukon |
op_source |
Semantic Fieldwork Methods; Vol. 1 No. 2 (2019): Cable, Seth: Describing future eventualities in Tlingit; 1-35 2562-9271 10.14288/sfm.v1i2 |
op_relation |
http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/storyboards/article/view/191725/188740 http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/storyboards/article/view/191725 doi:10.14288/sfm.v1i2.191725 |
op_rights |
Copyright (c) 2019 Seth Cable |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.14288/sfm.v1i2.191725 https://doi.org/10.14288/sfm.v1i2 |
_version_ |
1766217879145938944 |