Fake tense in Hausa counterfactuals: A novel argument for underspecified EXCL

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DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3765/salt.v30i0.4808

Abstract

The paper presents a novel argument from Hausa (Chadic) for the analysis of counterfactual fake tense in terms of a lexically underspecified EXCL-operator (Iatridou 2000). Evidence comes from the facts (i.) that Hausa has no obligatory inflectional tense marking on the verb; and (ii.) that temporal anteriority and counterfactuality in Hausa are both expressed by a left-peripheral operator element with the segmental shape daa, which is then tonally disambiguated to temporal dâa and counterfactual dàa, respectively. The analysis is cast in von Prince's (2019) modified branching-world model of counterfactuals.

Author Biography

  • Malte Zimmermann, Universität Potsdam
    Linguistic Department, Professor of Semantics and Theory of Grammar

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Published

2021-03-02

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Articles