Tense, Aspect, and Evidentiality in Okinawan
Christopher Davis
University of the Ryukyus
Overview: Okinawan (Northern Ryukyuan, Japonic) exhibits a three-way evidential contrast in its tense-aspect system, as illustrated by the example in (1), based on examples
found in Kudo et al. (2007). The example has one of three verb forms: the simple past (a),the witnessed past (b), and the present resultative (c), all of which can be translated into
English using the simple past tense:(c) aki-tee-n(1) taruu=ga hasiru(a) aki-ta-n (b) aki-i-ta-nTaro=nom rain.shutter open-pst-ind open-wit-pst-ind open-res.prs-ind“Taro opened the rain shutters.”...

While each form of the verb entails a past event of Taro opening a door, they have different
pragmatic import. The simple past form (a) is often described as pragmatically ‘neutral’,although I call this characterization into question below. The witnessed past (b) acts as akind of direct evidential, describing events that the speaker witnessed. For the example athand, the use of (b) requires that the speaker actually saw Taro open the rain shutters. The
present resultative form (c), by contrast, is typically used to describe past events that thespeaker did not witness, acting as a kind of inferential evidential.
I argue for the basic Okinawan TAM
Asp Hon1 Hon2 Tns1 Tns2
Moodparadigm sketched in Figure 1, built primarily-mishee- -yabi- -u-/-i- ∅-non the analyses of Miyara (2002), Kudo et al. -tooimpf/ prs
prog honpolindwit(2007), and Arakaki (2015). The evidential -tee-ta-rapst
dub
properties of the Okinawan tense-aspect forms res-tee-ruin (1) are argued to follow from the way thatmiremph
the constituent morphology relates the event
described by the verbal root to a topic situ- -teeinf
ation (aspect), and the way that these evenFigure 1: Okinawan TAM System
tualities are related to the utterance situation(tense). The witnessed past is argued to derive direct evidential semantics by acting as a kind of spatial tense marker (Faller 2004),
requiring that the spatiotemporal coordinates of the verbal event coincide at least partiallywith those of the speaker’s perceptual field. The present resultative is argued to generate animplicature that the verbal event’s spatiotemporal coordinates did not overlap with those of
the speaker’s perceptual field, and thus that the speaker did not witness the event.
The Imperfective/Witnessed Past: The tense suffix u/i spells out one of two contextually conditioned allosemes (cf. Marantz 2013). The alloseme wit can appear between
non-stative verb roots and past tense, giving rise to the witnessed past tense form. The
witnessed past requires that the speaker directly witnessed at least some part of the event
described by the verb. To model this, I follow Faller (2004) in defining the e-trace of anevent, which gives the spatiotemporal coordinates of the event, and the P-trace function,
which gives the spatiotemporal coordinates of the speaker’s perceptual field. The Okinawan
witnessed past tense requires that some part of the event coincide with the speaker’s perceptual field. This I attribute to the semantics of wit.

(2)a. [[wit]] = λe. ∃⟨t, l⟩ ∈ e-trace(e) ∩ P-trace(sp)b. [[1b]] = λe. open(Taro)(shutters)(e) ∧ τ (e) < t∗ ∧ ∃⟨t, l⟩ ∈ e-trace(e) ∩ P-trace(sp)Since only partial overlap is required, the speaker need only witness some subpart of theoriginal event; in (1b), for example, the use of the witnessed past requires only that thespeaker witness some part of Taro’s opening the door (for example, looking up to see Taro in
the middle of opening the door, and looking down again before he finishes). It is insufficient,however, that the speaker have only indirect evidence for the event, for example, seeing theopen door and inferring that Taro opened it.
Resultative Aspect: As the label suggests, the resultative morpheme tee is used to describe
a situation resulting from the event described by the verb itself. As discussed in more detailbelow, it also generates an implicature that the speaker did not directly witness the verbal
event itself. This is spelled out formally in (3), where result(e, e′ ) is true just in caseeventuality e is a result of (is caused by) eventuality e′ .
(3)[[res]] = λP λe. ∃e′ [P (e′ ) & result(e, e′ )]Implicature: ¬∃⟨t, l⟩ ∈ e-trace(e′ ) ∩ P-trace(sp)The connection between the verbal event and the result state expressed by resultative tee ismade in terms of causality, rather than temporal precedence or containedness. Nevertheless,given that causation is temporally asymmetric, we can derive that the verbal eventuality e′must precede the topic eventuality e in time:(4)

General Principle: result(e, e′ ) ⇒ τ (e′ ) < τ (e)The use of a present resultative like that in (1c) entails (given the above principle) that theopening event e′ took place before the utterance time. It thus acts, in effect, as a kind of
past tense, similar to the present perfect in languages like English.
The difference between the present resultative and a simple past tense is that the resultative introduces an additional eventuality, the result state. Given that one could havereported on the past verbal event using either a simple past or a witnessed past, I argue
that the use of the resultative triggers an implicature to the effect that the speaker did not
directly witness the verbal event, which is spelled out in (3) as the non-existence of any
overlap between the verbal e-trace and the speaker’s P-trace.
Further Details: In the full talk, I provide additional discussion of the link between aspectual categories and evidentiality, showing that the evidential implicature associated withresultative aspect has undergone partial pragmaticalization, resulting in a homophonous inferential evidential morpheme inf that entails the non-existence of direct evidence on thepart of the speaker for the verbal event. I then show how additional reanalysis has resulted
in a homophonous mirative morpheme that occupies the tense slot in the Okinawan verbal paradigm, reflecting the cross-linguistic tendency of inferential evidentials to give rise
to mirative interpretations (Rett and Murray 2013). I also show how competition has led
to additional evidential implicatures associated with the simple past form, which seems tocome with a preference for first-person subjects, and may trigger a reportative evidential
implicature when occurring with third person subjects as in (1c) (cf. Miyara 2002).

English r-sandhi: models and corpora
Jacques DURAND (University of Toulouse and CNRS, France)
The purpose of this paper is to offer a defence of corpus phonology (Durand, Gutand Kristoffersen 2014) with special reference to the phenomenon of English r-sandhi. The
term r-sandhi is used here to refer to what are often called ‘linking r’ (bette[r] andbetter) and ‘intrusive r’ (India[r] and Africa) in non-rhotic varieties of English. As
the distinction between ‘linking’ and ‘intrusive r’ has roots in a prescriptive tradition basedon spelling and has been questioned by some specialists, it is useful to have a neutralterm to refer to the phenomena involved, even if a distinction between two types ofbehaviour can be supported in some varieties of English.
R’-sandhi is one of the most discussed phenomena in the phonological study of non-rhoticvarieties of English. Over the past fifty years, linguists have exploited advances in all
major theoretical frameworks to propose new ways of modeling this phenomenon.
Proposals have been formulated in standard generative phonology (Wells 1982, Scobbie
1992, Vennemann 1972, Johansson 1973, McMahon 1994, inter alia) and its mostrecent development Optimality Theory (McCarthy 1993, Uffmann 2007), as well as inframeworks such as Government Phonology (Harris 1994) or Particle Phonology(Broadbent 1991) using unary primitives. However, the main focus of these treatments
has too often been limited to explanatory power and formal elegance, while empiricalresearch (although existent, e.g. Foulkes 1997) has remained insufficient. We present
here a French research programme (PAC) on varieties of English (Carr et al. 2004, Durand& Przewozny 2013), within which we have chosen to approach ‘r’-sandhi by firstcontributing to a renewal of the data. We have devised a coding system (Navarro 2013,Viollain 2014, Durand et al. 2014) which allows us to analyze ‘r’-sandhi in an explicit
qualitative and quantitative way and to reconsider theoretical treatments in the light ofrecent data. With this coding system we have explored a number of non-rhotic systems in
Lancashire, Boston and New Zealand.
In this presentation, starting from the study of the survey points just mentioned we will focus
on some of the theoretical issues relating to ‘r’-sandhi. We notably want to show that theinsertion of [ɹ] as an optimal hiatus breaker in English (a contention supported by a number ofOptimality Theory specialists (McCarthy 1993, Uffmann 2007)) is demonstrably not asphonologically natural and motivated as it is argued to be. We also wish to present evidence
which refutes the idea that the emergence of [ɹ] as a sandhi segment is a case of glide
formation in which the phonological features which are inherently present in the preceding
vowel spread to a melodically empty onset (Broadbent 1991, 1999, Backley 2011). Our
argument is that /r/ can be shown to be characterized by an element of centrality |@|(Jakobson et al. 1952, Harris 1994, Giegerich 1999, Navarro 2013) rather than an element ofaperture |A| as typically supported by Broadbent. Moreover, recent observations by a numberof authorities (Cruttenden 2008) suggest that the centering diphthong of NEAR /ɪə/ would
increasingly become realized as a long lax monophthong [ɪː] (whose representation is notcompatible with |A|) without affecting the realization of sandhi-‘r’. Finally, we will briefly

compare French liaison and English ‘r’-sandhi. The theoretical treatments of French liaison
and r-sandhi have been practically identical and yet we can show on the basis of extensive
studies of the French data (Durand & Lyche 2008, Durand et al. 2011, Durand 2014) that thebehaviour of the linking consonants in these two systems is quite different in crucial respects.
We argue that more attention to usage-based patterns is a way of making progress as too
many debates in modern phonology have been based on data that are second-hand andsometimes inherited from the prescriptive tradition, or even spurious data repeated fromarticle to article, which thus acquire an unjustified air of authenticity (Morin 1987, Laks 2008,Durand 2009).

Numeral Classifiers in Japanese and Movement to the Nominal Periphery
Masao Ochi
Osaka University
Numeral classifiers (henceforth NC) in Japanese are known to appear in various syntactic
environments: prenominally (1a), postnominally (1b), and ‘floating’ away from the host noun (1c).
(1) a.

Taro-wa roku-wa-no
kotori-omita.
Taro-TOP six-CL-GEN small bird-ACC saw‘Taro saw six small birds.’(Prenominal)b.

Taro-wa kotoriroku-wa-o
Taro-TOP small bird six-CL-ACC‘Taro saw six small birds.’(Postnominal)c.

Taro-wa kotori-o(kinoo)
roku-wa
Taro-TOP small bird-ACC yesterday six-CL‘Taro saw six small birds (yesterday).’mita.
sawmita.
saw(Floating)A substantial amount of work is available in the literature addressing the issue of whether these NC
constructions should be given a unified syntactic treatment. Huang and Ochi (henceforth H&O)
(2014) pursue a (partially) non-uniform approach to those NC constructions. They follow Saito et al.
(2008) and Miyamoto (2009) and analyze Prenominal NC as an NP-level modifier (or an adjunct),
as shown in (2a). Based on Watanabe’s (2006) insight, they also propose that Postnominal NC is, inessence, headed by a classifier (CL) that selects an NP and a numeral as its complement andspecifier, respectively. Crucially, this NP undergoes obligatory movement in Japanese (but not inChinese), yielding Postnominal NC when it ends up in the edge of an extended nominal domain(2b), and Floating NC when it moves out of a nominal domain and ends up in a clausal domain (e.g.,(VP etc.), as shown in (3).
(2) a.

[NP six-CL-gen [NP bird ]]b.

[XP birdi [X’ [CLP six [CL’ ti CL ]] X ]](where X may be filled by –o ‘Acc’)(3) [VP birdi [VP yesterday [CLP six [CL’ ti CL ]] saw ]]]I attempt to support this line of analysis by seeking evidence for the nominal-internal
NP-movement depicted in (2b). The discussion will be based on an investigation of some negative
polarity items (NPIs) consisting of ‘one’ + classifier, a noun, and the focus particle –mo. Following
Nakanishi (in prep.), I will refer to such NPIs as one-NPIs.
(4)a.

Taro-wa kinoo
ichi-wa-no
kotori *(-mo) mi-nakat-ta.
Taro-TOP yesterday one-CL-GEN small bird MO see-Neg-PAST‘Taro didn’t see any small bird yesterday.’b.

Taro-wa kinoo
kotori ichi’-wa (??-mo)Taro-TOP yestrday bird one-CLMO‘Taro didn’t see any small bird yesterday.’mi-nakat-ta.
see-Neg-PASTc.

Taro-wa kotori-okinoo
ichi-wa *(-mo) mi-nakat-ta.
Taro-TOP small bird-ACC yesterday one-CLMO see-Neg-PAST‘Taro didn’t see any small bird yesterday.’ (* with the NPI-reading)In light of the observation that Prenominal one-NPI (4a) and Floating one-NPI (4c) require -mowhile Postnominal one-NPI does not (see (4b)), I propose that (i) one-NPIs are headed by a focus(Foc) particle that may be phonetically realized (e.g., -mo) or null (see Nakanishi (in prep.)), and (ii)the distribution of the null Foc head is regulated by a condition similar to the one for thedistribution of null complementizers in English (Stowell 1981, Pesetsky 1992, and Bošković andLasnik 2003 etc.). In particular, adopting An’s (2007) idea that a clause in a non-canonical position
must have some overt material in its periphery (see (5a, b) vs. (5c) below) and applying it toone-NPIs in Japanese, I propose that the null Foc head is allowed in the Postnominal one-NPIconstruction because the spec of FocP is filled in this case by an NP that has moved there (see (6b)).
(5)

a.
b.
c.

[CP ∅ that [TP he likes linguistics ]] is widely believed.
[CP what ∅ [TP he likes ti]] is apples.
*[CP ∅ ∅ [TP he likes linguistics]] is widely believed.

(6)

a.
b.
c.

*[FocP ∅ [Foc’ [NP one-CL-Gen bird ] ∅FOC ]](Prenominal one-NPI)[FocP birdi [Foc’ [CLP one [CL’ ti CL ]] ∅FOC ]](Postnominal one-NPI)*birdi ....... [FocP ti [Foc’ [CLP one [CL’ ti CL ]] ∅FOC ]] ... (Floating one-NPI)

I will also explore some consequences of this line of analysis by investigating several distributional
and interpretive differences that are found among the three types of one-NPIs.
Selected references
An, D.-H. (2007) “Clauses in Noncanonical Positions at the Syntax-Phonology Interface,” Syntax
10, 38-79.
Bošković, Ž. and H. Lasnik (2003) “On the Distribution of Null Complementizers,” Linguistic
Inquiry 34, 527-546.
Huang, C.-T. J. and M. Ochi (2014) “Remarks on Classifiers and Nominal Structure in East Asian,”
In C.-T. J Huang and F.-H Liu, eds., Peaches and Plums, Language and Linguistics
Monograph Series, Academia Sinica, Taipei, 53-74.
Nakanishi, K. (in prep.) “Focus, Numerals, and Negative Polarity Items in Japanese,” Unpublishedms., Ochanomizu University.
Saito, M., T.-H. J Lin, and K. Murasugi (2008) “N’-Ellipsis and the Structure of Noun Phrases inChinese and Japanese,” Journal of East Asian Linguistics 17, 247-271.
Stowell, T. (1981) Origins of Phrase Structure, Ph.D. dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Mass.
Watanabe, A. (2006) “Functional projections of Nominals in Japanese: Syntax of Classifiers,”
Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 24, 241–306.