TAM expression

The TAM domain comprises such a huge range of various phenomena, including those particularly relevant for desententialization, that a number of clarifications are necessary before I can proceed to analyzing the data. The first and the most obvious thing to note is that this domain is clearly not an elementary one, but rather contains at least three smaller subdomains, tense, aspect and modality, which interact with each other in complex ways. The fact that these three features are actually hard to untangle in individual languages, as well as cross-linguistically, has been pointed out in a great number of studies, such as Comrie (1976a, 1985), Hopper (1982), Dahl (1985), Palmer (1986), Bybee, Perkins and Pagliuca (1994), and many others, see also Uusikoski (2016) for a recent overview. In this section I will, however, start from discussing them separately (in the order corresponding to various hierarchies of verbal features, e.g. Bybee 1985), and then provide the justification for considering the domain on the whole in the study of participial relative clauses.

Aspect is concerned with the internal temporal constituency of the situation (Comrie 1976: 5), that is, how the situation extends over time. The two major types to be distinguished here are lexical aspect (Aktionsart), which is inherent to the verbal stem and not marked formally, and grammatical aspect, a grammatical category with certain formal encoding. In a way, both types are relevant for the typology of participles. Lexical aspect, for instance, can indirectly set constraints on the formation of certain participial forms: as I showed in Section 3.3.5, absolutive participles in many languages are resultative and, thus, can only be derived from telic verbs. Malchukov (1995) also reports that the nonfuture participle in Even conveys the meaning of priority if derived from telic verbs, and the meaning of simultaneity when derived from atelic verbs. On the other hand, grammatical aspect (perfective/inperfective distinction, as well as quantitative aspect, such as iterative) is more relevant for the topic of the current and following chapters, namely desententialization. Since aspect has been shown by numerous authors to be one of the most internal verbal categories (see, for example, Malchukov’s hierarchy presented in Section 4.2.3), it is almost never lost completely in participial forms. At the same time, it does demonstrate a lot of peculiarities in desententialized forms, as I will show further in Section 5.2.

Tense is usually understood as a category that relates the time of the situation referred to to some other time, cf. Comrie (1976: 1–2). If it is the moment of speaking that is taken as a reference point, the tense is referred to as absolute. However, in complex sentences, languages often relate the time of the situation expressed in the dependent clause to the time of the situation expressed in the main clause. This is known as relative time reference. For certain types of subordinate relations, the temporal relation of the situation expressed in the dependent clause with respect to the situation expressed in the main clause is basically fixed. For instance, complement clauses introduced by perception verbs typically imply the meaning of simultaneity (relative present), e.g. I saw him playing in the garden, whereas adverbial purpose clauses make sense if the situation expressed in the dependent clause is understood as (potentially) following the situation in the main clause (relative future), e.g. He came here to bring me this book. These constructions, therefore, obligatorily feature a particular type of relative tense meaning. In their work on nominalizations, Comrie & Thompson (2007: 347) remark that the interpretation of the tense category as relative rather than absolute tense is very common generally with nonfinite verbal forms.

On the other hand, unlike some other subordination relations, relative relations, as noted by Cristofaro (2003: 198), have no implications about the time reference (or aspect value) of the two situations, since the speaker can arbitrarily select two situations simply on the grounds that they share a participant. The tense of a participle, therefore, can easily be either relative or absolute. In fact, for many languages it is very hard to determine whether a relative clause predicate has relative or absolute time reference. Neither the authors of grammars tend to specify that in their descriptions (a rare exception is, for instance, Bergsland’s (1997: 281) description of Aleut, which states clearly that participial tense markers refer to the matrix clause rather than to the moment of speech, see also Nikolaeva (2014: 316) on Tundra Nenets). Moreover, in some languages the situation can be very complicated, and the participial tense cannot be classified either as absolute or as relative, as shown in Shagal (2011) for Russian. Due to these issues, I will not further aim at consistently distinguishing between relative and absolute tense in participles, unless it is especially relevant for a certain language.

The domain of modality itself can be decomposed into several levels, which are represented (starting from the outermost) in the hierarchy proposed by Malchukov (2004: 18) with reference to Van Valin & LaPolla (1997), Dik (1997), Van der Auwera & Plungian (1998), Cinque (1999), and Nuyts (2000), see (121):

illocutionary > evidential > epistemic > root modality

As the outermost ones among all verbal operators (cf. Lehmann’s desententialization scale or Malchukov’s verbal hierarchy), illocutionary force markers, such as Quechua validators (Cole 1985) and various assertive particles in other languages, are the first to be lost in the process of desententialization. No languages in my sample allow for participial relative clauses containing any markers of this type, so this layer is not particularly relevant for the current discussion. Epistemic modality (the coding of the degree of commitment to the statement expressed by the speaker), and evidentiality (the coding of the source of information) are also shown to belong to a fairly external level cross-

linguistically. The only language in my sample where evidential distinctions can be regularly expressed within a participial relative clause is Matsés (Pano-Tacanan > Panoan; Brazil, Peru), which will be discussed further in Section 5.2.5. Thus, the only modal layer that is attested and thereby cross-linguistically relevant for the typology of participial relative clauses is root modality, also referred to as deontic modality, which pertains to the external circumstances that make the actuation of the situation necessary or allowed, cf. Cristofaro (2003: 60).

As I mentioned in the beginning of the section, in many cases the distinctions between the expression of tense, aspect and modality in a language are notoriously hard to draw. A widely recognized example of this problem is future tense, which in many languages has modal as well as tense value, and can thereby be considered as much a mood as a tense, cf. Lyons (1968 : 275–281), Comrie (1976: 2). The distinction between tense and modality seems, therefore, especially subtle (if existing) for the forms labelled as future participles in various languages. Haspelmath (1994: 162–163) shows that future/necesitative/potential meaning is common for passive participles, and it is indeed the case, for instance, for the Armenian participle in -ik’ (Dum-Tragut 2009), or Georgian participle in sa-V(-el) (Hewitt 1995). However, it is attested with other types of orientation as well. For example, in Kokama-Kokamilla (Tupian > Tupí-Guaraní; Peru; Vallejos Yopán 2010), forms in -tara employed exclusively for A relativization tend to express a potential meaning, which is additionally reflected in the fact that these forms are used to introduce purposive adverbial clauses. Apart from that, in Meadow Mari the participle in -šaš with the meaning of future or deontic modality, is contextually oriented (Brykina & Aralova 2012). The observed phenomena can presumably be explained by pragmatic inefficiency of characterizing a participant by referring to an event that has not yet taken place, but is regarded as factual. This is, however, exactly what pure future participles are supposed to do. Due to this, in many languages, participles expressing future meaning are also used to describe modified nouns with regard to possible or necessary situations. In addition to modality, the meaning of future can also alternate within a participial form with a certain aspect value, cf. future- habitual participle in -ee in Telugu (South-Central Dravidian; India; Krishnamurti & Gwynn 1985).

Another connection within the TAM domain has to do with the interaction between aspect and relative tense. The three generally possible values of the relative tense category are priority, simultaneity, and posteriority (past, present, and future relative tense respectively). However, as I have noted above, future participles with non-modal meaning are cross-linguistically fairly uncommon, so the meaning of posteriority is also very rarely attested in participial relative clauses. The temporal contrast is, therefore, mostly between relative past and relative present. A very typologically common and central distinction in the aspectual zone, is that between perfective and imperfective. As defined by Comrie (1976: 16), perfectivity indicates the view of a situation as a single whole, without distinction of the various separate phases that make up that situation, while the imperfective pays essential attention to the internal structure of the situation. This opposition, though seemingly formulated in purely aspectual terms, has been shown to demonstrate a significant interaction with temporal properties of situations, in that perfective verb forms are usually taken to refer to past events, whereas imperfective aspect is known to intertwine with the present tense, cf. Dahl & Velupillai (2013). In participial

relative clauses, the connection reaches the point where the two categories are almost impossible to discern. A number of languages basically distinguish between two types of participles, those referring to accomplished events preceding the situation expressed in the main clause (perfective/relative past), and those referring to ongoing situations simultaneous to the situation expressed in the main clause (imperfective/relative present). Tellingly, in the descriptions of individual languages such participles can be labelled either as past/present, cf., for instance, Beserman Udmurt (Uralic > Permic; Russia, Brykina & Aralova 2012), or as perfective/imperfective, cf., for instance, Tsafiki (Barbacoan; Ecuador; Dickinson 2002).

Taking into account the points made in this section, despite the outlined multifacetedness of the TAM domain, in this study I will regard it as a single, though complex, parameter. I will dinstinguish between tense, aspect and modality meanings expressed by participles whenever possible, but it is also very important to bear in mind that this distinction in many cases cannot and, therefore, should not be made.