Aikhenvald, Alexandra (2022) Beyond nominal tense: temporality, aspect, and relevance in Tariana noun phrases. Studies in Language, 46 (1). pp. 40-75.

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Abstract

Tariana, an Arawak language from Brazil, has nominal markers which con­vey temporal and aspectual information about the noun phrase. Besides nominal future, there is a distinction between completed and non­completed nominal pasts. The completed nominal past has three mean­ings - decessive ('late, gone'), temporal ('former'), and commiserative or deprecatory ('poor thing'). The latter is only applicable to humans and higher animates. The non-completed nominal past has a further semantic component of relevance of the state or property for the present time. The usage of the markers is governed by the principle of communicative neces­sity - in contrast to clausal, or propositional, tense-cum-evidentiality mark­ers which are always obligatory. Having special means for expressing tense, aspect and relevance within a noun phrase - distinct from tense and aspect categories with clausal scope - constitutes a typologically rare feature of the language.tempo

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