The expression of temporal meaning in Caboverdean / Fernanda Pratas.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pratas, Fernanda, 1963- author.

Series:

Trends in linguistics. Studies and monographs ; 332.

Trends in linguistics. Studies and monographs, 1861-4302 ; volume 332

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Grammar, Comparative and general--Temporal constructions.

Grammar, Comparative and general.

Cape Verde Creole dialect--Tense--Aspect.

Cape Verde Creole dialect.

Creole dialects, Portuguese--Tense--Aspect.

Creole dialects, Portuguese.

Physical Description:

x, 218 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Berlin ; Boston : De Gruyter Mouton, [2021]

Summary:

One hot topic in contemporary linguistics concerns how we express the passage of time in natural language. In particular, interesting questions have been raised as to how formerly understudied languages fit into deep-rooted theoretical frameworks, which among other features comprise a grammatical category of tense. This monograph mainly contributes to this debate in two complementary ways: through a detailed description of a large set of new data from two varieties of Caboverdean, a Portuguese-related language, and through a novel approach to the role of its few temporal morphemes, which allows to better define how tense meanings, aspect, and mood, together with other linguistic and extralinguistic information, provide what we understand as past, present, and future. The adequate study of this non-standardized language, with its impressive internal variation, thus brings new insights to old theoretical problems. Additionally, a welcome side effect of these new descriptions and analyses is that they promote a scientifically grounded attitude towards linguistic diversity. -- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

1 Questions and goals p. 1

1.1.1 Time in physics and philosophy p. 6

1.1.2 Time in linguistics p. 8

1.1.3 Presentism... to a certain point p. 14

1.1.4 Why Caboverdean p. 16

1.3 The language p. 20

1.3.1 The name p. 20

1.3.2 Some historical details p. 22

1.4 Corpus and methods p. 24

1.4.1 The data p. 24

1.4.2 Notes on fieldwork p. 29

2 Lexical items in the functional domain p. 35

2.1 Personal pronominal forms p. 35

2.1.1 Subject and object pronouns p. 36

2.1.2 Word order restrictions p. 46

2.2 Clausal negation p. 57

2.3 Temporal morphemes p. 63

2.3.1 The main elements p. 63

2.3.2 The persistence of the progressive p. 68

3 A view from subordination p. 77

3.1 Complement clauses p. 82

3.2 Relative clauses p. 85

3.3 Adverbial clauses p. 87

3.3.1 Explanatory/causal clauses p. 88

3.3.2 Antecedent clauses in conditionals p. 90

3.3.3 Temporal clauses p. 92

3.3.4 Purpose and negative-circumstance clauses p. 96

3.4 Multi-verb constructions p. 102

3.4.1 A note on serial verbs p. 105

3.4.2 Can and must p. 107

3.4.3 Want and promise p. 112

3.4.4 Allow and order p. 116

3.4.5 See and hear p. 119

3.4.6 Ways of starting p. 120

3.4.7 Come and go p. 123

4 Tense p. 129

4.1 Meaning and morphology p. 129

4.1.1 Times that matter p. 129

4.1.2 Tenseless languages p. 131

4.1.3 Perfect, progressive, habituals and predictions p. 134

4.2 The limits of finiteness p. 146

4.2.1 Tentative definitions p. 147

4.2.2 Empirical challenges p. 150

4.3 Further concerns p. 156

5 The most of times p. 161

5.1 Veridicality p. 162

5.1.1 A special kind of attitude p. 163

5.1.2 Suppletive forms p. 172

5.2 The notion of accessibility p. 177

5.2.1 'Mismatches': previous accounts and a new one p. 177

5.2.2 The past and us p. 181

5.3.1 Anchoring and accessibility p. 184

5.3.2 Low access morphology p. 189

6.1 Change p. 195

6.1.1 Segments p. 196

6.2 Goals and doubts p. 199.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 205-216) and index.

Other Format:

PDF

ePub

ISBN:

9783110668247

3110668246

OCLC:

1237550093

Publisher Number:

9783110668247