This paper contributes data from Paraguayan Guaraní (Tupí-Guaraní) to the discussion of how temporal reference is determined in tenseless languages. The empirical focus of this study is on finite clauses headed by verbs inflected only for person/number information, which are compatible only with non-future temporal reference in most matrix clause contexts. The paper first explores the possibility of accounting for the temporal reference of such clauses with a phonologically empty non-future tense morpheme, along the lines of Matthewson’s (Linguist Philos 29:673–713, (...) 2006 ) analysis of a similar phenomenon in St’át’imcets (Salish). This analysis is then contrasted with one according to which temporal reference is not constrained by tense in Paraguayan Guaraní, but only by context and temporal adverbials. A comparison of the two analyses, both of which are couched in a dynamic semantic framework, suggests empirical and theoretical advantages of the tenseless analysis over the tensed one. The paper concludes with a discussion of cross-linguistic variation of temporal reference in tensed and tenseless languages. (shrink)

The claim that Chinese had neither unambiguous, nor obligatory syntactic or morphological markers of counterfactuality, which has loomed large with philosophers of language, sinologists, and cognitive psychologists during the better part of the 20th century, is reviewed here from a diachronic and typological perspective, focussing on Old Chinese. In contradistinction from the cross-linguistically widespread use of past-tense morphology or, less commonly, of dissociative spatial markers, the predominant strategy to mark counterfactuals in OC was ‘direct’ assertion in the protasis. It made (...) use of a non-indicative copula marked for stativity by prefixation, which acts as a complementizer vis-à-vis the dependent clause. Morphological analysis, building upon advances in the reconstruction of OC phonology in Jacques, suggests that OC combined this non-indicative copula with a causative morpheme to encode concessives and with an existential negative to express a non-facultative negative counterfactual, surfacing as wēi 微. Straightforward “positive” counterfactuality could also be expressed through conjunction compounding in late Classical and Medieval Chinese, or by the use of simple superordinate verbs such as shǐ 使 or lìng 令. Morphologically, these share the property of being derived from the underlying verb base by causative or deontic prefixes, but CF interpretation also depends on the interplay with schetic markers and pragmatic embedding in the remainder of the sentence. Non-obligatory marking of counterfactuals thus emerges as a preference, not as a categorical incapacity, while the choice of ‘direct’ assertion, rather than temporal or distal implicatures to convey it, is unrelated to the richness of morphology in a given language. (shrink)