The speaker’s viewpoint on events: from tense to stance
Abstract
Based on Wolof data, this article introduces a new framework to account for the various functions of TAM makers in discourse while maintaining a unitary definition for each of them. This framework relies on a new functional definition of assertion, operationalizing the speaker’s viewpoint and the time of speech as the founding parameters of the default frame of reference (or base space) for any utterance. These two parameters function as the source of the modal and temporal specifications of the utterance. Their varying salience for a same TAM marker is shaped by its context of use. Applied to the Wolof verbal system, this approach allows first to account for the various uses of the Narrative, ranging from a narrative to a subordinating mood through various figures of subjective or intersubjective modality. Applied to Perfect, Presentative and imperfective suffix, this concept also reveals regular mechanisms connecting aspect, tense, modality and stance.
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