Nominal TAM


Nominal TAM is the indication of tense–aspect–mood by inflecting a noun, rather than a verb. In clausal nominal TAM, the noun indicates TAM information about the clause.
Whether or not a particular language can best be understood as having clausal nominal TAM can be controversial, and there are various borderline cases. A language that can indicate tense by attaching a verbal clitic to a noun is not generally regarded as using nominal TAM.

Examples of nominal TAM

Clausal nominal TAM

Various languages have been shown to have clausal nominal TAM. In the Niger-Congo language Supyire, the form of the first person and second pronouns reflects whether the clause has declarative or non-declarative mood. In the Gǀwi language of Botswana, subject pronouns reflect the imperative or non-imperative mood of the clause. In the Chamicuro language of Peru, the definite article accompanying the subject or object of a clause indicates either past or non-past tense. In the Pitta Pitta language of Australia, the mandatory case marking system differs depending on the tense of the clause. Other languages exhibiting clausal nominal TAM include Lardil, Gurnu, Yag Dii, Sahidic Coptic, Gusiilay, Iai, Tigak, and Guaymi.

Non-clausal nominal TAM

In the Guarani language of Paraguay, nouns can optionally take several different past and future markers to express ideas such as "our old house ", "the abandoned car", "what was once a bridge", "bride-to-be" or even "my ex-future-wife," or rather, "the woman who at one point was going to be my wife."

Related grammatical phenomena

Verbal clitics

Although verbal clitics such as -ll in English are attached to nouns and indicate TAM information, they are not really examples of nominal TAM because they are clitics rather than inflections and therefore not part of the noun at all. This is easily seen in sentences where the clitic is attached to another part of speech, such as "The one you want'll be in the shed".
Another way to tell the difference is to consider the following hypothetical dialogue:
The speaker cannot emphasise the future time by placing voice stress on she'll, and so instead uses the expanded phrase she will. This is characteristic of clitics as opposed to inflections.
The significance of this can be seen by comparison with a second hypothetical dialogue, using the English negative suffix -n't :
In this case the speaker could choose to say isn't rather than is not'. Even though the stress then falls on the syllable IS, the meaning of the sentence is understood as emphasising the NOT. This indicates that isn't is one inflected word rather than a word with a clitic attached.