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Meaning Meeting - Mal Shah / Epistemic readings of future tense in Gujarati

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Meaning Meeting - Mal Shah / Epistemic readings of future tense in Gujarati

Linguistics | Philosophy Wednesday, October 30, 2024 9:30 am - 10:45 am Marie Mount Hall, 1108B

Wednesday October 30, Mal leads the Meaning Meeting with discussion of future tense in Gujarati, and an epistemic use of it with an intriguing distribution: it arises only when attached to the auxiliary verb. An abstract of the presentation is below.

Gujarati, like many languages, allows both an epistemic and future reading of its future tense marker, -s-. What is special about Gujarati is that one or the other reading is forced by what the morpheme affixes to: it is future just in case it affixes to the main verb, and epistemic just in case it affixes to the auxiliary verb. I hope to convince you that there are not two homophonous morphemes pronounced [s], but only one -s-, which is a variable flavor modal.

Add to Calendar 10/30/24 09:30:00 10/30/24 10:45:00 America/New_York Meaning Meeting - Mal Shah / Epistemic readings of future tense in Gujarati

Wednesday October 30, Mal leads the Meaning Meeting with discussion of future tense in Gujarati, and an epistemic use of it with an intriguing distribution: it arises only when attached to the auxiliary verb. An abstract of the presentation is below.

Gujarati, like many languages, allows both an epistemic and future reading of its future tense marker, -s-. What is special about Gujarati is that one or the other reading is forced by what the morpheme affixes to: it is future just in case it affixes to the main verb, and epistemic just in case it affixes to the auxiliary verb. I hope to convince you that there are not two homophonous morphemes pronounced [s], but only one -s-, which is a variable flavor modal.

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