The Structure of Multiple Tenses in Inuktitut
This thesis presents and analyzes the tense system of South Baffin Inuktitut (SB), a Canadian variety of the Inuit language. It demonstrates that, although closely related dialects are argued to be tenseless (Shaer, 2003; Bittner, 2005), SB has a complex tense system where the present, past, and fut...
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ftunivtoronto:oai:localhost:1807/27581 2023-05-15T15:35:37+02:00 The Structure of Multiple Tenses in Inuktitut Hayashi, Midori Johns, Alana Linguistics NO_RESTRICTION http://hdl.handle.net/1807/27581 en_ca eng http://hdl.handle.net/1807/27581 tense Inuktitut 0290 Thesis ftunivtoronto 2020-06-17T11:18:49Z This thesis presents and analyzes the tense system of South Baffin Inuktitut (SB), a Canadian variety of the Inuit language. It demonstrates that, although closely related dialects are argued to be tenseless (Shaer, 2003; Bittner, 2005), SB has a complex tense system where the present, past, and future are distinguished, and the future and past are divided into more fine-grained temporal domains. I demonstrate that SB has present tense, which is indicated by the absence of a tense marker. A sentence without an overt tense marker may describe a past eventuality if it contains a punctual event predicate; otherwise, it describes an eventuality that holds at the utterance time. I argue that all zero-marked sentences have present tense and any past interpretation is aspectual. I also investigate six different past markers and demonstrate that they all instantiate grammatical tense. The analysis shows that these markers can be semantically classified into two groups, depending in part on whether or not they block more general tenses (e.g., -qqau, the ‘today’ past blocks the use of the general past -lauq when the time of eventuality falls within ‘today’). I label both the general tenses and the group which can block the general tenses as primary tense, whereas the other group which does not block more general tenses is labelled secondary tense. This distinction may have broad cross-linguistic applicability. I examine the distribution of four different future markers and argue that three of them indicate grammatical future tense. They are also grouped into two groups, in the same manner as the past tenses. Finally, I analyse the temporal interpretations of primary tenses in dependent clauses. I show that when tense is interpreted relative to the time of the superordinate eventuality, the domain of tense may not necessarily shift accordingly (e.g., the domain of hodiernal tense in a main clause is the day of utterance, and in an embedded clause the domain can still be the day of utterance). Embedded tenses with remoteness specifications have not been investigated before, and this thesis opens up a new area to our understanding of tenses in human language. PhD Thesis Baffin inuit inuktitut University of Toronto: Research Repository T-Space |
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Open Polar |
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University of Toronto: Research Repository T-Space |
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ftunivtoronto |
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English |
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tense Inuktitut 0290 |
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tense Inuktitut 0290 Hayashi, Midori The Structure of Multiple Tenses in Inuktitut |
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tense Inuktitut 0290 |
description |
This thesis presents and analyzes the tense system of South Baffin Inuktitut (SB), a Canadian variety of the Inuit language. It demonstrates that, although closely related dialects are argued to be tenseless (Shaer, 2003; Bittner, 2005), SB has a complex tense system where the present, past, and future are distinguished, and the future and past are divided into more fine-grained temporal domains. I demonstrate that SB has present tense, which is indicated by the absence of a tense marker. A sentence without an overt tense marker may describe a past eventuality if it contains a punctual event predicate; otherwise, it describes an eventuality that holds at the utterance time. I argue that all zero-marked sentences have present tense and any past interpretation is aspectual. I also investigate six different past markers and demonstrate that they all instantiate grammatical tense. The analysis shows that these markers can be semantically classified into two groups, depending in part on whether or not they block more general tenses (e.g., -qqau, the ‘today’ past blocks the use of the general past -lauq when the time of eventuality falls within ‘today’). I label both the general tenses and the group which can block the general tenses as primary tense, whereas the other group which does not block more general tenses is labelled secondary tense. This distinction may have broad cross-linguistic applicability. I examine the distribution of four different future markers and argue that three of them indicate grammatical future tense. They are also grouped into two groups, in the same manner as the past tenses. Finally, I analyse the temporal interpretations of primary tenses in dependent clauses. I show that when tense is interpreted relative to the time of the superordinate eventuality, the domain of tense may not necessarily shift accordingly (e.g., the domain of hodiernal tense in a main clause is the day of utterance, and in an embedded clause the domain can still be the day of utterance). Embedded tenses with remoteness specifications have not been investigated before, and this thesis opens up a new area to our understanding of tenses in human language. PhD |
author2 |
Johns, Alana Linguistics |
format |
Thesis |
author |
Hayashi, Midori |
author_facet |
Hayashi, Midori |
author_sort |
Hayashi, Midori |
title |
The Structure of Multiple Tenses in Inuktitut |
title_short |
The Structure of Multiple Tenses in Inuktitut |
title_full |
The Structure of Multiple Tenses in Inuktitut |
title_fullStr |
The Structure of Multiple Tenses in Inuktitut |
title_full_unstemmed |
The Structure of Multiple Tenses in Inuktitut |
title_sort |
structure of multiple tenses in inuktitut |
publishDate |
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url |
http://hdl.handle.net/1807/27581 |
genre |
Baffin inuit inuktitut |
genre_facet |
Baffin inuit inuktitut |
op_relation |
http://hdl.handle.net/1807/27581 |
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1766365949268590592 |