draft manuscript - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley

2.2.3.1 Tense-Aspect-Mood
2.2.3.1.1 Tense Modern Omagua exhibits a four-way tense distinction, which is expressed with
the set of non-obligatory VP-final 34 enclitics given in Table 2.7. 35 The Old Omagua texts, however,
reveal no morphology exclusively dedicated to encoding tense. Instead, future tense in the ecclesiastical
texts is conveyed with the imperfective =aRi (§2.2.3.1.2), 36 and past temporal reference is
conveyed with an independent temporal adverb 1m1nua ‘long ago’. Neither of these strategies for
expressing temporal reference is attested in modern Omagua.
Table 2.7: Modern Omagua Tense Markers
past
future
distal =suRi
proximal =(u)í
proximal =usu
distal =(u)saRi
That the future tense morphemes in Table 2.7 do not appear in the ecclesiastical texts is not
surprising, given that they are the result of grammaticalization processes that followed the Jesuit
period. The proximal future =usu has only recently grammaticalized from an andative, and the
distal future =usaRi grammaticalized from a sequence of the andative and imperfective (=usu=aRi), 37
which can still be analyzed as compositional in Old Omagua, both in form and function. 38
The absence of past tense morphemes, however, is not expected, as both are reconstructable
to Proto-Omagua-Kokama. The absence of =suRi pst.dist is particularly striking, given that the
events in question (the life and deeds of Christ) occurred in the remote past. Instead, past tense is
encoded via the morphologically free adverb 1m1nua ‘long ago’, as in (2.10).
(2.10) maniasenuni Dios ta1Ra awaRa uwaka 1m1nua?
mania =senuni Dios ta1Ra awa -Ra uwaka 1m1nua
what.action =purp God son.male.ego man =nom.purp transform long.ago
‘Why did the son of God become man?’
(example (6.12a))
Note that the distribution of 1m1nua in the ecclesiastical texts is unlike its synchronic distribution.
It appears sentence-finally and occurs in nearly every context in which a Jesuit author would
34 See §2.3.7 for a discussion of verb-final versus VP-final enclitics.
35 Vowels enclosed in parentheses in Table 2.7 are obligatorily deleted following vowel-final verb roots or stems (all
verb roots except one (pan ‘be rotten’) are vowel-final). The vowel u surfaces only when the tense enclitic serves as
the phonological host to a pronominal proclitic, in which case the vowel of the proclitic either coalesces or deletes,
following the patterns in Table 2.4 (e.g., ta= =usaRi → [tosaRi]; nI= =usaRi → [nusaRi]; Ra= =usaRi → [RusaRi]).
36 The fact that aspectual markers may receive tense-like temporal interpretations is not surprising. That is, different
types of temporal reference may stem from a pragmatic implicature whereby markers of ‘closed’ aspects (in the
sense of Smith (1991)) come to be interpreted as markers of past tense, and markers of ‘open’ aspect (ibid.) come
to be interpreted as markers of future tense.
37 Note that =aRi imperf follows =usu in Old Omagua, although synchronically -aRi is a bound suffix that precedes
=usu (see §2.2.3).
38 There is evidence that the grammaticalization of =usaRi predates that of =usu, namely in that =usaRi may co-occur
with verbs (e.g., uRi ‘come’) whose directional semantics should otherwise render the use of a future historically
containing an andative =usu nonsensical. In contrast, =usu fut may not co-occur on such verbs. That is, synchronic
=usaRi has broadened in its distribution, having entirely lost the directional semantics formerly encoded by =usu
and, whereas =usu fut has not, presumably because it is homophonous with the still-productive andative.
15