I

ArticlesA Contrastive Study on
Past Tense Forms inTrans-New Guinea
Languages Spoken in
Madang Province,
Papua New Guinea

Masahiko Nose

Shiga University / Associate Professor

Introduction

When we consider tense and aspect, the pasttense and related tense systems are necessary
grammatical features. This study examines pasttense forms in Trans-New Guinea languages.1)
Trans-New Guinea languages are grammatically different from each other, and this study
identifies common tense features by contrasting four sample languages spoken in Madang
Province, which is located on the northerncoast of Papua New Guinea (Lynch 1998: 6264, Nose 2016a, Nose 2016b, Nose 2017).
The languages examined in this study include
Amele and Siroi, which are spoken in the
coastal areas, and Usan and Tauya, which are
spoken in the mountain areas (see Figure 1).
The languages spoken in the coastal area are inclose contact with other Trans-New Guinea aswell as Austronesian languages spoken in the
coastal area, and their grammars have affected
one another (cf. Dempwolff n.d., Nose 2016b,
Ross 2002). Consequently, Trans-New Guinea
languages spoken in the coastal area have developed less complicated grammar structures ingeneral. In contrast, the Trans-New Guinea
languages spoken in the mountain areas havebeen isolated from other languages and haveless contact with Austronesian languages.
Therefore, Trans-New Guinea languages spoken in the mountain areas generally continue
to retain complicated grammatical structures(Foley 2000).

1) Trans-New Guinea languages are sometimes referred

to as Papuan, part of a language group of more than 500
languages (Foley 2000).

2) I have been conducting fieldwork in Madang Prov-

ince, particularly in the Amele area. I have already visited the Siroi area, but I have not begun to conduct interviews there. The mountain areas, Tauya and Usan, arehard to reach, and I have been unable to develop pointsof contact there. Fortunately, we can identif y several
kinds of descriptive grammars in the Madang Province,024

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Autumn / Sep. 2018 / No.417

This study examines the past tense features ofthe four languages in terms of form-meaning
relationships. It considers common past tensefeatures in Trans-New Guinea languages by investigating their past tense morphology andsemantics. These findings clarify concepts oftime in Trans-New Guinea languages and theirusage in regional culture and community(Sinha et al. 2011, Velupillai 2016, Nose 2016b).
Section 2 offers an overview of previous studies that investigated tense and lang uage
descriptions in Papua New Guinea and outlines the study objectives. Section 3 presents
data on the past tense in the sample languages.
Section 4 discusses the form/meaning of thepast tense in the sample languages. Section 5
presents the conclusion.

Figure 1: Sample languages spoken in Madang Province,
Papua New Guinea2)

including the ones utilized in this study. More than 250
indigenous languages are used in the province, including
Trans-New Guinea and Austronesian ones. Of these, approximately 50-70 languages have been recorded; theothers are not recorded yet, and some of them are in theprocess of dying and being replaced by the lingua franca
Tok Pisin.

A Contrastive Study on Past Tense Forms in Trans-New Guinea
Languages Spoken in Madang Province, Papua New Guinea

II

Preliminary studies
and study objectives

This section reviews previous studies ontense and several studies on the languages spoken in Papua New Guinea. In linguistic studies,
several researchers have focused on the pasttense in grammar; these include classical studies such as those by Comrie (1976, 1985). It also
includes functional studies such as those by Bybee et al. (1994), Bybee and Dahl (1989),
Hopper (1979), and Dahl (1985). Recently,
more advanced studies on tense and aspect
have been conducted by Bhat (1999), Dahl and
Velupillai (2005), Velupillai (2016), Johanson(2000), and Smith (2005). Other significant
recent studies on cognitive linguistics include
those by Sinha et al. (2011) and Nose (2016a).3)
General studies on New Guinea languages
have been conducted by Lynch (1998), Foley(2000), and Aikhenvald (2014). Approximately 1,000 languages are spoken in the Melanesia
area, and more than half of them are classified
as Papuan or Trans-New Guinea languages.
Numerous previous studies have explored descriptive grammars; however, none havedetermined common grammatical traits toconfidently identify Trans-New Guinea features (see also Nose 2016a, 2016b, 2017).
Velupillai (2016) summarized several previous studies and claimed that tense features havealready been investigated in many languages.
Furthermore, she mentioned that there are two3) These previous studies have clarified theoretical andcross-linguistic points of tense and aspect, and apparently, studying such elements further is fruitless because
there is no room left to analyze them. This study, nevertheless, still tries to consider the behaviors of the pasttense by utilizing the languages’ descriptive grammars
and my field interviews. It, therefore, gives deeper descriptions of tense (and aspect partly) in the sample languages and tries to identify concrete features or historical mechanisms among them.

Masahiko Nose025

kinds of languages: one language uses tense,
and another is tenseless. She further claimed
that present and past tenses are more important than other tenses. Dahl and Velupillai(2005) conducted a typological study on tenseand created a map of typological past tense features, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 3: The past tense zoomed in for New Guinea Island(Dahl and Velupillai 2005)

Figure 2: The past tense in world languages (Dahl and Velupillai 2005)

They investigated the past tenses in morethan 200 languages and classified these into
those that have past tense and those that donot. Furthermore, they checked the remotenessdistinctions of languages (see several past tense
forms in Amele (1)). They found that many
languages have past tenses (94 + 38 + 2 = 134);
however, many languages still do not have pasttense (white dots: 88). Tenseless languages areobserved in Central Africa, South-East Asia,
and North America. White triangle and dots(94) indicate “present tense and past without
remote distinctions,” i.e., tenses with “one present and one past.” The majority of languages,
including European languages (such as English), are included in this group; however,when we focus on the map of New Guinea Island, the distribution is different.

026

In Figure 3, particularly in New Guinea Island,
there are languages with 2–3 remoteness distinctions (grey circle dots) despite several
exceptions (no tense or no remote distinction).
For example, Amele has a complicated tense
system, as shown in (1).
(1) Amele: (Roberts 1987: 224–225)
Present: Ija fi-gi-na.
I see - present/1sg“I see.”Past:
Today's past: Ija fi-g-a.
		
I see-today’s past/1sg
		“I saw (today).”
Yesterday's past: Ija fi-g-an.
			 I see - yesterday’s past/1sg
			 “I saw (yesterday).”
Remote past: Ija fe-em.
		
I see - remote past/1sg
		“I saw (before yesterday).”This kind of remoteness distinction can be observed in other Trans-New Guinea languages
as well. Nose (2016a) discussed the reason why

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Amele has such remoteness distinctions andwhy Amele and these “rich tense” languages
have more complicated grammatical morphology of verbs.4)
First, this study explores common past tensefeatures of the four sample languages. Previously, Dahl (1983) tried to determine whether
there is any remote distinction between thetenses. This study tries to answer this question
by investigating the cases of Trans-New Guinea
languages. Second, it explores the differences
between coastal and mountain areas, contrasting the data to identify characteristics from ageographical perspective. Third, it explores
how the past tense is involved in the grammarof a language.

ficult to access, the grammar books provide
sufficient information for this study.5)
Amele is a Trans-New Guinea language spoken near the coastal area. There are three kindsof past tenses with remoteness distinctions, as
shown in (1) and (2). These distinctions areamong today, yesterday, and remote past tenses.

III

Amele has additional past usages, habitual pastand negative past, as shown in (3). Their past
behaviors are morphologically motivated, andtheir verbal morphologies are shown in Table 1.

Data on Trans-New Guinea
languages

This section presents the data on the sample
languages. This study particularly investigates
verbal morphology of the past tense and theperfective implications of the past tense forms.
It summarizes the data and explains the grammatical mechanism of tenses in Trans-New
Guinea languages. Morphologically, their past
forms are suffix, inflection, or other forms. Furthermore, this study examines the meanings ofthe various past forms and investigates the usages of the past tenses in several Trans-New
Guinea languages. It partly utilizes interview
data (from Amele) gathered by the researcher
and partly relies on books of descriptive grammars (from Usan, Siroi, and Tauya). Because
the locations of Usan, Siroi, and Tauya are dif-4) Nose (2017) conducted a contrastive study on richtense and tenseless languages. The study clarified thefeatures of the languages within the rich tense system.
Dahl and Velupillai (2005) clarified that many languages
have remoteness distinctions of the past tense in New
Guinea Island and articulated the reasons why they havesuch a complicated system.

A Contrastive Study on Past Tense Forms in Trans-New Guinea
Languages Spoken in Madang Province, Papua New Guinea(2) Remoteness distinctions in Amele:
Present: Ija hu-gi-na. ”I come.”
Past: 	Today’s past: Ija hu-g-a. “I came (today).”
Yesterday’s past:	Ija hu-g-an. “I came (yesterday).”
Remote past:	Ija ho-om. “I came (before yesterday).”(3) Two additional past usages in Amele:
Habitual past: Ija ho-l-ig.
I come-habitual past/1sg“I used to come.”
Negative past: Ija qee ho-l-om.
I not come-negative
past/1sg“I did not come.”
While Amele has several kinds of past tense
forms, it has a limited aspect system. Therefore,
perfect/perfective meanings are realized using
today’s past tense form (Roberts 1987: 227) or
the adverbial word “wele (already),” as shownin (4).

5) Nose (2016a) already discussed the past tense featuresof several languages in Papua New Guinea, but theirsamples are varied in general, among Amele and Kobon(Trans-New Guinea), Bel (Austronesian), and Tok Pisin(creole). In contrast, this study focuses on Amele, Siroi,
Tauya, and Usan, the Trans-New Guinea languages spoken in Madang Province. This study particularly seeks
for deeper description of the past tenses and their processes of grammaticalization.

Masahiko Nose027

(4) Perfective in Amele: (Roberts 1987: 232)
Uqa wele
nui-a.
He already go - today’s past/3sg“He has already gone.”
Another coastal area language, Siroi, is outlined in Wells’ (1979) descriptive grammar.
Siroi has a complicated verbal morphology
with past and immediate past suffixes, as shownin Table 2.
(5) Tense usages in Siroi (Wells 1979: 55, 57)
a. Past: pankesulu-na.
throw away finish-3sg/past“He wasted all (his money).”b. Immediate past:(kupe) te-tiwe
tu-kik.
leg
take-stand give-him-1pl/immediate past
“We fixed his (leg) completely.”c. Perfective: Kutu-we deng pur-na
pour-it cease-3SG/past“He finished pouring it out.”
There are basic (endocentre and obligatorystem) and non-basic (dependent and independent suffix) inflections; tense suffixes are nonbasic, but they agree with person and number(Wells 1979: 27, 30). Tense meanings are binary,past, and immediate past, as in (5a) and (5b).
Perfective implication is shown in (5c) throughcompletive and entire verb phrase fillers thatmean “cease” or “finish.”Third is Usan, a mountain area language described by Reesink (1987). Usan also has acomplicated verbal morphology, and it features
two kinds of past tense suffixes: near past andfar past, as shown in Table 3. Near past indicates something that occurred on the same day

as the time of utterance, while far past refers tosomething that occurred on the previous day.
All tense suffixes are included in verbal inflections of person and number, and the sentence
examples are shown in (6).6)(6) Usan: Reesink (1987: 96, 101, 102)7)
a. Neutral tense (= present tense):
Ginam ite
ir-aumplace upgo.ip-1sg/present“I am going up to that village.”b. Near past:mani eng
qoan
ne-t
yam thebefore you-for
big-umei.
put-1sg/near past
“I’ve put the food for you long ago” (qoan:
long ago).
c. Far past:Itu-ut qoriub-ub di-umei,
morning banana plant come up-1sg/near
pastende qam-arei.
thus say-3sg/far past
“He said: this morning I planted a banana
and came up.”
Perfective implication in Usan is realized periphrastically through the verb wogub “cease” or“stop,” as in (7).
(7) Perfective in Usan: (Reesink 1987: 83)
iyau bur wan
toatba
dog pig young follow takeis-ariwogub
descend-3sg cease“The dog followed the piglet and took it andwent down …”

6) Davies (1989) identified another mountain language,

Kobon, which also has a distinction between near pastand far past.

7) The far past suffix -arei in (6c) is an inf lection of theverb class (4a and 4b), which is why the form -arei is notfound in Table 3.

028

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Fourth is Tauya, a mountain area language
described by MacDonald (1990). Tauya has arelatively simple verbal morphology. MacDonald (1990: 13) referred to these as morphologies“desinences.” It has only the aorist tense, as
shown in Table 4. In the aorist tense, it is not
the 2nd and 3rd persons that are conflated but
rather the 1st and 2nd persons in both singularand plural number. Moreover, Tauya has a future tense form.
(8) Tauya; (?a: indicative mood suffix), (MacDonald 1990: 13),a. Ni-e- ?aeat 1/2 indicative“I/You ate.”b. Ni-ene-?aeat 1/2 indicative“We/You ate.”
Aorist usage in (8) means imperfective past,a simple past form characteristic in Tauya anddistinct from those in other Trans-New Guinea
languages. Tauya has two means of expressing
perfective: using the auxiliary -fe- (transitive)
and -ti- (intensive).8)(9) Perfective in Tauya (Wells 1990: 195):
Ni-fe- (perfective) -ene-?a.
“We/you ate.”
Table 5 provides a summary of the sample
languages and findings of this study. Generally,
verb suffix is a common feature in the sample
languages, but only Tauya is simpler than otherlanguages in its verbal morphology. Remoteness distinctions (near past and far past) are
observed in Amele, Siroi, and Usan, but Tauya
has only the aorist (imperfective past) tense.

MacDonald (1990) indicated several auxiliaries
incorporated in verbal morphology, such as
stative, habitual, perfective, progressive and soon; however, they do not have remoteness distinctions. Trans-New Guinea languages are
generally poor in the grammar of aspect; thus,
aspectual meanings are realized lexically (using
adverb “already”) or through verbs “cease” and“finish” (except in Tauya’s perfective).
Amele has the most complicated remotenessdistinctions, but the author found that Amele
speakers prefer to use today’s past for expressing present and past situations in everyday
conversation. Moreover, the language has a distinction between near and far past. Remotenessdistinction may be an important factor inTrans-New Guinea languages, but this distinction is not observed in Tauya. Instead, Tauya
has another grammatical tense and other perfective forms.

IV

Discussion

The data in Section 3 indicate that each of
the sample languages has at least one past tense
form, but Amele, Siroi, and Usan have remoteness distinctions based on near and far past.
Amele has a diverse tense system, including habitual and negative past. Tauya is an exception
as it has a single aorist tense and two kinds ofperfective forms.
This section discusses two issues. First, it explores functional motivations for past tenseusages. Second, it discusses the relation bet we en tense and c onc ept of time. (cf.
Aikhenvald 2014, Sinha et al. 2011).
When we investigated the nature of the pasttense forms in the sample Trans-New Guinea
languages, we observed that their past tense be-8) Tauya might have had remoteness distinctions before,

but its speakers ceased to use them, and it has adopted asimpler aorist tense. It is possible that this loss is due to alack of contacts with Austronesian languages, whichlack tense systems in general.

A Contrastive Study on Past Tense Forms in Trans-New Guinea
Languages Spoken in Madang Province, Papua New Guinea

Masahiko Nose029

Table 1: Forms: verbal inflections of oboga (walk) 9)
Present

Today’ past

Yesterday’s past

RemoteHabitual

Negative past1sg

ob-ig-aob-ig-aob-ig-an

ob-on

ob-igi-na-on

ob-o-rin2sg

ob-og-aob-oy-aob-og-an

ob-on

ob-ogo-na-on

ob-o-ron3sg

ob-ey-aob-ey-aob-ey-an

ob-on

ob-e-na-on

ob-o-r1pl

ob-oq-aob-oq-aob-oq-an

ob-on

ob-oqo-na-on

ob-o-rom

2/3pl

ob-oig-aob-oig-aob-oig-an

ob-on

ob-ogi-na-on

ob-o-roim

Table 2: Tense suffixes in Siroi (Wells 1979: passim)
Present suffix

Past suffix

Immediate past suffix

1s

-et

-en

-it

2/3s

-ate/ -it

-na

-at

1d

-ek

-keng

-ik/ -ki

2/3d-ade/ -ik

-naik

-aik

1p

-eg

-geng

-ig/ -gig

2/3p-ade/ -ig

-naig

-aig

Table 3: Tense suffixes in Usan (Reesink 1987: 94-96)10)
Present tense

Near past suffix

Far past suffix

1s–ou-m/-au-m

-umei

-emei

2s

-an

-anei

-enei

3s

-a

-ai

-erei

1p

–oun/ -aun-unei-eminei

2p–oumon/ -oamon-umanei-emanei

3p–our/-oar-urei-emireiTable 4: Tauya personal desinences: Aorist tense (past action
without indication of its completion or continuation)
1/2sg

e

1/2pl

ene

3sg

a

3pl

I

9) Amele has negative future tense form. Thus, it has

positive and negative forms in both the past and futuretenses. Finnish (Finno-Ugric) has negative verb forms
with conjugations, which are similar to Amele forms.
This study considers that Amele and Finnish have semantically significant commonalities among the positive
and negative forms and verbal morphology.

03010) There are several kinds of verb classes in Usan, andthe inflections in Table 3 are used in the verb classes (1,2,
3, and 4b) in the far past tense.

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Autumn / Sep. 2018 / No.417

Table 5: Summary
Morphology

Meanings11)

Perfective meaning

Other points

Amele (coastal)

Verb inflections, suffix Today, Yesterday,
Remote, habitual

Today, lexical ”already” Negative and habitual
past

Siroi (coastal)

Past suffix in verbs(included in verb
morphology)

Lexical verbs like“cease” and “finish”

Past and immediate
past

Usan (mountain) Suffix in verbs (includ- Near past and far past
ed in verb morphology)

Lexical verb of “cease”

Tauya (mountain) Suffix in verbs (simpler) Aorist (imperfective
past)

Two Perfective auxilia- 1st and 2nd person forms
ries
are identicalhaviors are diverse and that each language has
at least one past tense marker. We found that
Amele, Siroi, and Usan have remoteness distinctions, but Tauya does not have such a
distinction. All the sample languages havesome perfective marker or usage, but their options change depending on the lexical adverb“already” or on verbs “finish” and “cease.” Tauya
has two kinds of grammatical perfectives.
Therefore, this study claims that past tense isnecessary in Trans-New Guinea languages andthat their morphology is involved in the verbal
inflections. Semantically, remoteness distinction is a characteristic of all the languages. The
speakers of Amele, Siroi, and Usan have a motivation to employ such remoteness distinctions(for example, there is no such system in Tok Pisin), but they thought that the perfective is not
so necessary. This is because they want to know
when the action happened (today, yesterday, or
before) and are not interested in the completeness of the action. Tauya has another system inwhich there is no remoteness distinction andthe speakers are more interested in the com-pleteness of the action. Thus, we consider
Tauya to be an exception.12)
Next, this study discusses how past tense
grammar is involved in Trans-New Guinea languages and how the people deal with time intheir grammars (cf: Sinha et al. 2011). We consider why Amele, Kobon, Siroi, and Usan haveseveral kinds of past tense forms. Trans-New
Guinea languages encode several points in agiven time sequence (Velupillai 2016) but havefew distinctions among their aspectual meanings. In contrast, Tauya has a relatively poor
usage of tense. This study follows the understanding that each of these features of TransNew Guinea languages was included in thegrammars of their languages at an earlier stage(cf. Foley 2000). Sinha et al. (2011) claimed
that there is no concept of time such as “today”
or “last Monday” in Amondawa, but it has atense. Temporal concepts are composed of
temporal adverbs such as “yesterday” or “lastnight,” tense and aspect, and other means. As
was already shown, there are many tenselesslanguages; therefore, tense marking and concept of tense are not necessary features of11) Dahl (1983) discussed how three kinds of memory(surface, shallow, and deep) can be incorporated in thepast tense grammar. The relations between the surface
and deep memories are grammaticalized in the relation
between the near and far past tenses.

12) As indicated by Nose (2016a), Tok Pisin has both

A Contrastive Study on Past Tense Forms in Trans-New Guinea
Languages Spoken in Madang Province, Papua New Guinea

Masahiko Nose

past and perfective markers and is used as the lingua
franca in everyday communication. Thus, speakers of every native language have knowledge of the past/perfective distinction through their knowledge of Tok Pisin.

031

natural languages (Nose 2017). Nevertheless,the sample languages have at least one pasttense, which indicates that past tense is a necessary feature of their grammars.
Finally, this study claims that remoteness distinctions (near versus far) were an importantfactor for the speakers in New Guinea in earlier
times; however, nowadays, these are not so important and have been lost in case of somelanguages. Instead, other means (lexical perfective, aorist tense, and temporal adverbs) areused to describe past events. The differences
between coastal and mountain areas cannot be
observed in their languages’ past tense usages.13)

V

Conclusion

sibility for any errors. This work was supported
by J S P S K A K E N H I G r a nt Num b er
15K02478. An earlier version of this paper waspresented at the International Symposium on
Verbs, Clauses and Constructions, October 26,
2016, the University of La Rioja, Logrono,
Spain. I am grateful to the audience for theircomments and criticisms of earlier versions of
the paper.
References
⦿Aikhenvald, A. Y. 2014. The art of grammar: a practicalguide. Oxford University Press.

⦿Bybee, J. R. and Ö. Dahl. 1989. The creation of tense andaspect systems. Studies in Language, 13: 51–103.

⦿Comrie, B. 1976. Aspect. Cambridge University Press.
⦿Comrie, B. 1985. Tense. Cambridge University Press.
⦿ Dahl, Ö. 1983. Temporal distance: Remoteness distinc-

tions in tense-aspect systems. Linguistics, 21: 105-122.

This study claims that the languages spoken
in Madang Province, Papua New Guinea haveremoteness distinctions, particularly between
near and far past, with the exception of Tauya.
It finds that the languages’ tense grammaticalizations are involved in verbal morphology.
Thus, they are radically different from English
and other European languages because theyneed a clear difference between near and far
past and have a poor system of marking theperfective. These languages feature complicatedverbal morphologies for marking rich tenses
and partly for aspect, characteristics that can beobserved in languages spoken in South Africa
and South America (Dahl & Velupillai 2005).

⦿Dahl, Ö. 1985. Tense and aspect system. Basil Blackwell.

【Acknowledgments】
I would like to thank Neret Tamo as well as
the villagers in Sein and Kranget Island andMadang Province, Papua New Guinea for theirinformation and kindness. I claim sole respon-⦿ MacDonald, L . 1990. A grammar of Tauya (Vol. 6).

⦿ Dahl, Ö. and V. Velupillai. 2005. The past tense. In:

Haspelmath, M. et al. (eds.). The World Atlas of Language Structures, Oxford University Press, WALS feature #66: 270–273.

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Mimeo. Narer, Karkar Island: Lutheran Mission.

⦿ Foley, W. A. 2000. The languages of New Guinea. An-

nual review of anthropology, 357–404.

⦿ Hopper, P. J. (ed.). 1982. Tense-aspect: Between Seman-tics & Pragmatics: Containing the Contributions to a
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1979 (Vol. 1). John Benjamins Publishing.

⦿ Johanson, L. 2000. Viewpoint operators in European

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versity of Hawai’i Press.

Walter de Gruyter.

⦿ Nose, M. 2016a. The forms and meanings of past tense:

A contrastive study of Papua New Guinea. The Hikone
Ronso (Working paper of Shiga University), 409: 6-14.

13) A previous version of this study found that Waskia,

a coastal area language, has completely changed its tense
system, which is now similar to those of Austronesianlanguages. We will discuss this point in the future study.

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⦿ Nose, M. 2016b. Borrowing temporal expressions in

New Guinea languages: a contrastive study of loanwords. Tohoku Studies in Linguistics, 24: 95–104.

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A Contrastive Study on Past Tense Forms in Trans-New Guinea
Languages Spoken in Madang Province, Papua New Guinea

Masahiko Nose033

A Contrastive Study on Past Tense Forms inTrans-New Guinea Languages Spoken in
Madang Province, Papua New Guinea
Masahiko Nose

Past tense forms are necessary features of thegrammars of the world languages. This study
examines the past tense in Trans-New Guinea
languages spoken in Madang Province, Papua
New Guinea. Trans-New Guinea languages aregrammatically and lexically different from eachother; nevertheless, this study tries to find common tense features by comparing four sample
languages: Amele and Siroi, which are spoken
in the coastal area, and Usan and Tauya, which
are spoken in the mountain area. This study examines past tense features in terms of formmeaning relationships. It finds that thelanguages spoken in the area have remotenessdistinctions, particularly near and far past distinctions, except for Tauya. Additionally, theobserved past tense forms partly imply aspect
meanings (perfective).
This study finds that verb suffix is a common
feature that indicates the past tense in the sample languages, but only Tauya has a simpler
verbal morphology of its past tense. Remoteness distinctions (near past and far past) are
observed in Amele, Siroi, and Usan, while
Tauya has only the aorist (imperfective past)tense. Instead of remoteness distinctions, Tauya
has several auxiliaries incorporated into its verbal morpholog y. These auxiliaries havemeanings of stative, habitual, perfective, andprogressive relation, and so on, but they do nothave a remoteness distinction per se. Trans-

034

New Guinea languages are generally poor in
the grammar of aspect, and their aspectual
meanings are realized lexically (using the adverb “already”) or through the verbs “cease” or“finish” (except for in Tauya’s perfective).
Finally, this study claims that remoteness distinctions were important for the speakers of
New Guinea in earlier times; however, nowadays, they are not as significant. Further, insome languages (including Tauya), they havebeen lost entirely. Other means (lexical perfective, aorist tense, and temporal adverbs) are
now more commonly used to specify past
events. The differences between coastal andmountain areas cannot be observed in the pasttense usages, but Tauya’s past tense functions
are an exception among Trans-New Guinea
languages in general.

THE HIKONE RONSO

Autumn / Sep. 2018 / No.417

A Contrastive Study on Past Tense Forms in Trans-New Guinea
Languages Spoken in Madang Province, Papua New Guinea

Masahiko Nose035