Tense across Languages / / ed. by Monika Rathert, Renate Musan.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DGBA Backlist Complete English Language 2000-2014 PART1
• MitwirkendeR: Bittner, Maria,; Chen, Cheng-Fu,; Demirdache, Hamida,; Giannakidou, Anastasia,; Haude, Katharina,; Landgraf, Julia,; Lungu, Oana,; Musan, Renate,; Rathert, Monika,; Remberger, Eva-Maria,; Rödel, Michael,; Schwager, Magdalena,; Tonhauser, Judith,
• HerausgeberIn: Musan, Renate,; Rathert, Monika,
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter, , [2011]; ©2011
• Year of Publication: 2011
• Language: English
• Series: Linguistische Arbeiten , 541
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (262 p.)

This book addresses recent developments in the study of tense from a cross-paradigm and cross-linguistic point of view. Leading international scholars explore challenging ideas about tense at the interfaces between semantics and syntax as well as syntax and morphology. The book is divided into three main subsections: 1) Tense in tenseless languages; 2) Tense, mood, and modality, and 3) Descriptive approaches to some tense phenonema. Although time is a universal dimension of the human experience, some languages encode reference to time without any grammatical tense morphology of the verb. Some of these exceptional “tenseless” languages are investigated in this volume: Kalaallisut, Paraguayan Guaraní and Movima. Modal verbs are polyfunctional in the sense that they express both tense and modality. In this volume, an untypical modal is analyzed, a modal analysis of imperatives is argued for, and sentential mood, which is closely related to modality, is analyzed. It is always interesting to look at the expression of tense in understudied languages, which is done here for Scottish Gaelic, Austronesian Rukai and German dialects. The volume can be used for graduate and undergraduate level teaching

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Table of contents -- Tense across Languages – an Introduction -- A. Tense, mood, and modality -- Tense and Volitionality -- Imperatives and Tense -- (Non)veridicality and Mood Choice: Subjunctive, Polarity, and Time -- B. Understudied Tense Phenomena and Typological Variation -- Use and Temporal Interpretation of the Rukai Future Tense -- Tense in the Scottish Gaelic Verbal System -- New Perspectives on Double Perfect Constructions in German -- C. Tense in Tenseless Languages and Sequence-of-tense Phenomena -- Time and Modality without Tenses or Modals -- Tense Marking on Dependent Nominals in Movima -- The Paraguayan Guaraní Future Marker –ta: Formal Semantics and Cross Linguistic Comparison -- Zero-Tense vs. Indexical Construals of the Present in French L1 -- Index