From Space to Time Temporal Adverbials in the World’s Languages Martin Haspelmath LINCOM Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 03 1997 LINCOM EUROPA München – Newcastle Contents Acknowledgments v Abbreviations vi 1. Introduction 1 1.1. Space and time in language 1 1.2. NP-based time adverbials 3 1.3. Definition of the domain of inquiry 5 1.4. Subsidiary goals of this book 9 1.5. Criteria for isolating the semantic functions 10 1.6. The data: language sample and sources 14 1.7. Theoretical prelude: The relation between space and time 17 1.8. Mapping the spatial axes onto the time line 21 2. Semantic functions of time adverbials 23 2.1. The semantics of time 23 2.2. Simultaneous location 29 2.3. Sequential and sequential-durative location 32 2.4. Temporal distance 35 2.5. Temporal extent 38 3. General issues 43 3.1. Deixis in temporal adverbials 43 3.2. Some additional semantic functions 47 3.2.1. Medial 47 3.2.2. Approximative 48 3.2.3. Perdurative 48 3.2.4. Purposive extent 48 3.2.5. Regular recurrence 50 3.3. Alternatives to NP-based time adverbials 52 4. Sequential location 56 4.1. Anterior/posterior based on spatial front/back 56 4.2. The front/back orientation of the time line 57 4.3. Diachrony and grammaticalization of sequential markers 61 4.4. Further sources of anterior and posterior markers 63 iv Contents 5. Sequential-durative 66 5.1. Allative and ablative sources 66 5.2. ‘Beginning’ and ‘end’ as sources 70 5.3. ‘Since’ from ‘later’ 72 5.4. Deixis in the posterior-durative function 72 5.5. Anterior-durative and anterior-limitative 78 6. Temporal distance 80 6.1. Distance markers based on sequential markers 80 6.2. Other sources of distance markers 86 6.2.1. ‘Pass’/‘exist’ 86 6.2.2. ‘Within’ 89 6.2.3. ‘Back’ 92 6.2.4. ‘Over’ 93 6.2.5. ‘Yet’ 94 6.3. Deictic and non-deictic distance expressions 96 7. Simultaneous location 102 7.1. Introduction 102 7.2. An implicational map for simultaneous location markers 105 7.3. Location in hours 108 7.4. Location in day parts and seasons 110 7.5. Location in days, months, years, and festivals 114 7.6. Zero or minimal marking with certain modifiers 116 8. Temporal extent 120 8.1. Atelic extent 120 8.1.1. Zero or minimal case marking 120 8.1.2. ‘For’ in atelic-extent adverbials 126 8.1.3. Other sources of atelic-extent markers 129 8.2. Telic extent 130 8.3. Distance-posterior 132 8.3.1. Distance-posterior is modeled on posterior-durative 132 8.3.2. Distance-posterior is modeled on atelic extent 133 8.3.3. Distance-posterior based on ‘exist’ 136 9. Conclusion 140 9.1. The metaphor from space to time 140 9.2. Types of temporal expressions 142 9.3. A summary of the spatial sources of temporal markers 144 9.4. Grammaticalization in temporal markers 144 Contents v 9.5. Universals of time in language 145 Appendix: The data 147 References 168 Indexes 176 Acknowledgments I thank the following colleagues and native speakers for providing relevant data for this study: Armenian Stella Gevorkian Bulgarian Tania Kuteva Chinese Jinyue Yeh, Stefanie Eschenlohr Estonian Urmas Sutrop Finnish Juhani Rudanko Georgian Mixail Xuskivadze Hausa Mahamane L. Abdoulaye Italian Davide Ricca, Sonia Cristofaro Japanese Kaoru Horie Korean Shin-Ja Hwang Latvian Nicole Nau Persian Mitra Sharifi Russian Leonid Kulikov, Vladimir Plungian For useful comments on the manuscript, I am grateful to Nicole Nau (who provided many pages of detailed remarks – special thanks!), Ekkehard König, Peter Koch, Bill Croft, and Susanne Michaelis. The original idea for this study grew out of an informal project of the StuTS back in 1989, which didn’t get anywhere then, but should at least be mentioned here. I dedicate this book to Teresa. Bamberg, 17 April 1997 Martin Haspelmath vi Abbreviations Abbreviations ABIL abilitative INESS inessive ABL ablative INSTR instrumental ABS absolutive LOC locative ACC accusative LSit located situation (§2.1) ADESS adessive NEG negation ALL allative NOM nominative ANTIC anticausative PASS passive AOR aorist PAST past ART article PERF perfect ATTR attributive marker PF(V) perfective AUX auxiliary PL plural CAUSAT causative mood POSTR posterior CONDIT conditional mood PRES present CONV converb PREV preverb COP copula PRTV partitive DECL declarative PT particle DENOM denominalizer PTCP participle DEST destinative case PURP purposive DISTR distributive QSit quantified situation DO direct object REM remote DU dual RefT reference time (§2.1) DUR durative SG singular E example SPEC specific ELAT elative SS same subject ERG ergative SUPERDIR superdirective ESS essive SUPEREL superelative FIN finite SUPERESS superessive FUT future TERM terminative GEN genitive TNS tense HOD hodiernal TOP topic ILL illative TRANSL translative case IMPF imperfective TU time unit (§2.1) INDEF indefinite VERB verbalizer Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1. Space and time in language Space and time are the two most important basic conceptual domains of human thinking. Neither space nor time are part of a more basic conceptual domain, and neither can be reduced to the other. But space and time seem to show a peculiar relatedness that is perhaps not evident to a naive philosophical observer: Human languages again and again express temporal and spatial notions in a similar way, as for instance in E1-3. E1. a. (orientation) The priest stood before the altar. b. (sequence) St. Michael's day is before Christmas. E2. a. (movement) Pepito is going to the village to help his granny. b. (future) The rain is going to help the farmer. E3. a. (extreme part) We are still far from the end of the queue. b. (last moments) You will be tired at the end of the day. This phenomenon is so widespread in different languages across the world, and in different parts of the vocabulary, that we have to conclude that space and time are linked to each other in human thinking as well. One common way of conceiving of this relationship is by saying that temporal expressions are based on spatial ones, and that the transfer is a kind of conceptual metaphor (e.g. LAKOFF & JOHNSON 1980, CLAUDI & HEINE 1986). That more abstract domains of language (and cognition) may be modeled on the spatial domain is an old insight, which goes back at least 150 years (see HJELMSLEV (1935) on the localists of the 19th century), and probably much further. But it is only fairly recently that linguists have begun the systematic study of the world's languages in order to verify whether the transfer from space to time is limited to languages of a particular cultural sphere (Europe) or a language family (Indo-European), or whether it is a widespread, perhaps universal phenomenon, found across the globe in languages of diverse families. 2 1. Introduction Such systematic typological investigations became more urgent when the old assumption of universality was challenged. In particular, Benjamin Lee Whorf, the famous student of Hopi and author of the "linguistic relativity hypothesis", claimed that Hopi (a Uto-Aztecan language of Arizona and New Mexico) does not show the metaphor from space to time: "The absence of such metaphor from Hopi speech is striking. Use of space terms when there is no space involved is NOT THERE – as if on it had been laid the taboo teetotal!" (WHORF 1956:146). For the grammatical marking of time on verbs, i.e. the domain of tense and aspect, there is now a sizable body of cross-linguistic research which shows, among other things, that the use of spatial periphrastic expressions is by no means geographically, genetically or typologically limited (cf. ANDERSON 1973, TRAUGOTT 1974, 1975, 1978, DAHL 1985, BYBEE et al. 1994). Of course, not all temporal and aspectual expressions are based on spatial ones, but on the basis of the large-scale cross-linguistic surveys we now have a much clearer picture of their distribution. But the use of spatial expressions for temporal notions is even more salient in temporal adverbials which relate a situation to a reference time expressed by a noun phrase. In E4-7, some examples from different languages are shown. In all these cases, a preposition is used both in a spatial and in a temporal sense. E4. English a. I visited my uncle in Odessa. b. I visited my uncle in the spring. E5. German a. Annemarie stand vor der Kirche. 'Annemarie stood in front of the church.' b. Annemarie wurde vor vier Monaten geboren. 'Annemarie was born four months ago.' E6. Russian a. Ona snjala šljapu s golovy. 'She took her hat off from her head.' b. Ona ždet s pervogo dekabrja. 'She has been waiting since December first.' 1.1. Space and time in language 3 E7. Italian a. Il monastero si trova tra Ivrea e Biella. 'The monastery is between Ivrea and Biella.' b. Partiremo per Pavia tra dieci mesi. 'We'll leave for Pavia in ten months.' Such prepositional temporal adverbials have not been investigated system- atically across languages yet. This book is devoted to their study. I examine the most important grammatical markers expressing such adverbials (i.e. adpositions and cases) in 53 languages from around the world, hoping to contribute in this way to the larger problem of the conceptualization of time through language. The data confirm the universalist's expectation that spatial expression of temporal notions is extremely widespread in the world's languages, being limited neither genetically (e.g. to Indo-European), nor geographically (e.g. to Europe), nor typologically (e.g to languages with SVO word order). In this sense, the transfer from space to time can be said to be universal. 1.2. NP-based time adverbials Not all temporal adverbials based on noun phrases are straightforward metaphorical extensions from spatial adverbials. This is clear from examples like E8 from English, where markers are used that have no corresponding use in spatial expressions: the prepositions after and for, the postposition ago, and the use of a bare NP (indicated by "Ø" in E8d). E8. a. After the wedding, the couple went to the Baltic Sea coast for their honeymoon. b. Peace was concluded finally three weeks ago. c. Jacob served his father-in-law Laban for fourteen years. d. Most trees bear fruit Ø every year. Nevertheless, such non-spatial markers have been included in this study, because it is only by way of contrast with non-spatial markers that we can appreciate the role of spatial markers for temporal adverbials. Similarly, tense and aspect forms that are not based on spatial metaphor were included in cross-linguistic studies, because we need those other forms as a background. 4 1. Introduction Thus, the present book is intended as a study in the tradition of partial typology, where one limited area of grammar is studied in a large number of languages with the goal of discovering cross-linguistic generalizations. The main goal of this work is to assemble cross-linguistic evidence for the hypothesis that temporal notions are conceptualized in terms of spatial notions, but in addition I discuss a fair number of additional points that arise in connection with the data. As far as I can tell, this book is the first typological study of NP-based time adverbials.1 As I mentioned above, typological investigations of tense and aspect have already been undertaken (DAHL 1985, BYBEE et al. 1994), but so far nobody has looked in detail at grammatical marking of time through noun phrases. It is perhaps natural that linguists should have focused on the marking of time on verbs first, because tense and aspect are generally obligatorily expressed in every sentence and are therefore much more salient than temporal relations expressed by adverbials. Furthermore, because of their generally primary nature with respect to temporal adverbials, spatial adverbials are more salient, and spatial markers have already been the subject of a systematic typological study (SVOROU 1994). And finally, another area of grammar that is adjacent to my topic are temporal adverbial clauses. These have also received considerable attention from linguists, perhaps because of their greater complexity when compared to NP-based time adverbials. However, I know of no systematic cross-linguistic study of temporal clauses, although there are typological treatments of adverbial clauses in general, including temporal clauses (cf. THOMPSON & LONGACRE 1985, KORTMANN 1997, HENGEVELD 1997). Thus, NP-based time adverbials have so far been upstaged by tense and aspect, spatial adverbials and temporal adverbial clauses, but the program of partial typology will re- main incomplete until all areas of grammar are illuminated by the cross- linguistic point of view. The fact that this study is the very first attempt at a typological investigation of time adverbials expressed by noun phrases also determines some of the features of the work. First, my goal is a broad survey of the phenomena, not a detailed examination of particular problems. Thus, I study a fairly wide range of temporal relations that can be expressed by NP-based adverbials, rather than focusing on a few select ones. Second, I did not attempt to construct a bias- free world-wide sample of languages as the data base of my investigation. 1 KUČERA & TRNKA (1975) present a very thorough study of time adverbials in three languages (Czech, Russian, English), but their main concern is with cooccurrence restrictions rather than with the typology of form-meaning pairings. 1.2. NP-based time adverbials 5 While representative samples are certainly desirable in principle, they are not yet a realistic goal for many areas of language structure because there is simply not enough information available. This is certainly true of NP-based temporal adverbials: While probably all grammars have something to say on tense, aspect and spatial adverbial markers, many grammars are very incomplete with respect to NP-based temporal adverbials. Thus, my generalizations are based on a sample of fifty-three languages in which all continents are represented, but which is heavily biased toward European languages. It simply did not seem reasonable to me to exclude languages about which relevant information is readily available only in order to have a balanced sample, which would then have to be much smaller. But of course we have to keep in mind that from this sample we do not get a picture that faithfully reflects the situation in the languages of the world. Thus, the present work must be seen as a first approximation to the typological study of NP-based time adverbials, which should be followed by a more balanced study that truly reflects the current linguistic diversity on our planet. In the remainder of this introductory chapter I will first give a definition of the subject matter of this study (§1.3), followed by an overview of the sec- ondary goals that I hope to reach (§1.4). Section 1.5 discusses the criteria for determining the main semantic sub-types of time adverbials around which the presentation will be organized, and §1.6 deals with the sources of my data, especially the sample of fifty-three languages. In §1.7, I discuss a number of views on the relation between space and time in language that are found in the literature, and I conclude this chapter with some thoughts about the mapping of spatial structure onto temporal structure. 1.3. Definition of the domain of inquiry The domain of inquiry of this book consists of adverbials based on noun phrases which serve as temporal qualifications of situations.2 As I have argued elsewhere (HASPELMATH 1997), studies in partial typology must be based on mixed functional-formal definitions, i.e. the phenomena that are compared across languages are delimited by both functional (or semantic) and formal conditions. 2 I use the term situation as a cover term for events (actions, processes) and states, following COMRIE (1985:5), HERWEG (1990:12-13), BYBEE et al. (1994:55). Sometimes the terms action or event are used, confusingly, for the same purpose. An equally appropriate but clumsier term would be state-of-affairs.