TY  - JOUR
A1  - Mucha, Anne
T1  - Past interpretation and graded tense in Medumba
T2  - Natural language semantics : an international journal of semantics and its interfaces in grammar
N2  - This paper provides a formal semantic analysis of past interpretation in Medumba (Grassfields Bantu), a graded tense language. Based on original fieldwork, the study explores the empirical behavior and meaning contribution of graded past morphemes in Medumba and relates these to the account of the phenomenon proposed in Cable (Nat Lang Semant 21:219-276, 2013) for GA (c) ky. Investigation reveals that the behavior of Medumba gradedness markers differs from that of their GA (c) ky counterparts in meaningful ways and, more broadly, discourages an analysis as presuppositional eventuality or reference time modifiers. Instead, the Medumba markers are most appropriately analyzed as quantificational tenses. It also turns out that Medumba, though belonging to the typological class of graded tense languages, shows intriguing similarities to genuinely tenseless languages in allowing for temporally unmarked sentences and exploiting aspectual and pragmatic cues for reference time resolution. The more general cross-linguistic implication of the study is that the set of languages often subsumed under the label "graded tense" does not in fact form a natural class and that more case-by-case research is needed to refine this category.
KW  - Graded tense
KW  - Past interpretation
KW  - Grassfields Bantu
Y1  - 2016
UR  - https://publishup.uni-potsdam.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/55296
SN  - 0925-854X
SN  - 1572-865X
VL  - 25
SP  - 1
EP  - 52
PB  - Springer
CY  - Dordrecht
ER  -